NHDILUNGHAM 




NRY-BARTLETT 




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John H. Dillingham 

1839-1910 

Teacher, Minister in the Society of 
Friends, Editor 



By 

J. Henry Bartlett 



Printed Privately 



Zbc ftntcftetbocftcr press 
New York 



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Copyright, ign 
J. HENRY BARTLETT 






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INSCRIBED TO THE MEMORY 
OF 

LYDIA BEEDE DILLINGHAM 

THE SELF-SACRIFICING MOTHER 
WHO WAS ALWAYS AN INSPIRATION TO HER SON 



i 



INTRODUCTION 

So far as possible it has been the effort in 
this volume to make John H. Dillingham WTite 
his own life. He left little if any material de- 
signed for that purpose. The habit of his Harvard 
training to have a " common book " in which 
he wrote a first draft of every exercise, theme, 
or letter, clung to him in measure through life. 
These books have been preserved and although 
there is one hiatus of nearly fifteen years in 
which there is no record, each distinct period 
of his life is represented. In addition, his 
mother preserved the bulk of his college letters, 
and of those received in the four or five years 
following his graduation. All this material has 
been most kindly entrusted to me by Mary P. 
Dillingham and her daughters. They have very 
properly retained those records that relate to 
themselves. Thus, it is possible to present ma- 
terial of greater value even than an auto- 
biographical record would be. Having been 
written without a view to publication, it is 
perfectly natural and spontaneous. 

There need be no apology for printing such 
a life. In the circle of the Society of Friends 
where his activities were known, John Dilling- 



vi INTRODUCTION 

ham was a unique figure. Naturally well en- 
dowed, he had the best education his time 
afforded; for several years after his college 
course he was in close touch with the most 
brilliant intellectual and social circle in the 
country; under a prompting of duty and en- 
couraged by prophetic utterances of gifted min- 
isters as to a future of usefulness, he entered 
Haverford College as an instructor. There, in 
face of a previous judgment against it, he em- 
braced conservative Quakerism " as a con- 
viction,'^ and during nearly forty years of his 
life found in it a greater measure of spiritual 
freedom than any of all the other forms of 
Christianity (he had tested them nearly all) 
seemed to contain. This choice was made in no 
narrow^ sectarian spirit. The following letter 
by one not of his chosen faith — a summer resi- 
dent of the Cape and a neighbor of his — in- 
dicates very fairly the breadth of outlook 
compatible with what some might seem to regard 
a narrow path to walk in. 

"Little Neck, 

"West Falmouth, 
" Massachusetts, 
"July 16, 1911. 

"My dear Mrs. Dillingham: 
" It is fitting that the life of a man like John 



INTRODUCTION vii 

Dillingham is to be published. None could bet- 
ter inspire others to right living and right think- 
ing. He was a real teacher whose influence upon 
the minds and hearts of the young will be most 
beneficent and enduring. Everything of real 
value in life seemed to engage his interest and 
in a spirit most broad and tolerant. His ac- 
tivity was remarkable; he, evidently, received 
strength from God to go on and work beyond 
the limit of the ordinary man. His mental 
capacity always impressed me as most sound, 
with every indication of great knowledge. His 
conversation was direct, forcible, and enlight- 
ening; impressing one with the belief that he 
knew whereof he spoke. His convictions upon 
matters of religious principles were staunch, yet 
always gentle and tolerantly expressed. He was 
sane and well balanced; always rang true. He 
was gentle and modest. 

" It is a distinct loss, in these days of care- 
less thinking and reckless living, to have taken 
from ns a man like this. I miss his presence 
constantly, but am thankful to have had such 
a friend, whose memory is blessed. 
" Your friend, 

" Edward L. Parker." 

No larger hope is entertained in committing 



viii INTRODUCTION 

these pages to print than that they may "in- 
spire others to right living and right thinking." 



J. Henry Bartlett. 



TUCKERTON, N. J., 

21st X, 1911. 



CONTENTS 

CHAPTER PAGE 

Introduction v 

I. Life [Written by John H. Dillingham] 

FOR Class Book of 1862 [Harvard] . 1 

II. Childhood and School Environment . 7 

III. At Harvard College . . . .25 

IV. Teaching Appointments . . .41 
V. John H. Dillingham as Teacher . 63 

VI. Development of Religious Life . . 76 

VII. John H. Dillingham as Minister . 117 

VIII. John H. Dillingham as Editor . . 159 

IX. Personal Characteristics . . . 169 

X. Service and Recompense . . . 177 

Index 187 



I 



IX 



ILLUSTRATIONS 



FACING 
PAGE 



John H. Dillingham, ^t. 70 . Frontispiece 



\^ 



Birthplace. Still Standing in West Fal- 
mouth. Home of Grandfather Dilling- 
ham U '^ 

Lawrence Academy in Falmouth. Still 

Standing 24 i^ 

Dillingham Homestead, West Falmouth. 
Abram Dillingham's House, Opposite the 
Birthplace 61 1^ 

Lydia Bebde Dillingham. Photograph after 

80. She Lived to be 92 . . . . 108 ^ 



CHAPTER I 

LIFE [WBITTEN BY JOHN H. DILLINGHAM] FOR 
CLASS BOOK OF 1862 [HAEVARD] 

In that part of the town of Falmouth, Barn- 
stable County, Massachusetts, known as West 
Falmouth or " Hog Island," situate on the shore 
of Buzzard's Bay, and on the first day of June 
in the year 1839, as my father was hoeing corn 
in the field, I came into the world. My father, 
like, I believe, all his New England ancestors, 
was a farmer and still is a farmer on his paternal 
acres. His name is Abram. My mother's 
name before marriage was Lydia Beede Hoag; 
her residence and birthplace, Sandwich, New 
Hampshire. 

On the back of a representation of the Dilling- 
ham coat-of-arms, made by an English geneal- 
ogist not very long since, I find written the fol- 
lowing information : "The family of Dillingham 
is originally from Wood Dyllingham in the 
county of Norfolk in England. [Description 
of Arms.] The cross and the arms were given 
to those who were in the fourth crusade with 

1 



2 LIFE OF JOHN H. DILLINGHAM 

King Eichard Cceur de Lion. The lion and the 
crest show second in command." 

An Edward Dillingham settled in Lynn, Mas- 
sachusetts, 1636, coming from Bitteswell, County 
Leicester, England, where he had estate: re- 
moved next year to Sandwich, Massachusetts; 
was representative in 1642 and had Henry 
and John; the younger born in England about 
1636. Henry married Hannah Perry, 24 June, 
1652, and lived in Sandwich; left children 
Edward, John, and Simeon. Edward, born 21 
February, 1665, married Abigail Nye and lived 
in Sandwich. Their son Edward, born 1st mo. 
1703 / 4, married Elizabeth Ooodspeed, who died 
8 September, 1793, aged nearly ninety-six, and 
their son Ignatius, married Deborah Gifford, 
February, 1762 (?). They settled in Falmouth. 
Ignatius died 15 August, 1816. Deborah died 
22 October, 1793, and Ignatius's second wife, 
Hannah, died 25 July, 1829. Ignatius and 
Deborah's son Joseph, one of eight children, 
born 1 November, 1776, married Esther Rogers 
(descended from John Rogers the Smithfield 
martyr, vid. Neiv England Primer) ^ and my 
father Abram who is one of their seven or 
more children married Lydia Beede Hoag, 
1837. I am the eldest of their four children 
(all boys), the third and fourth of whom died 



CLASS BOOK OF 1862 3 

young. My brother is preparing for college at 
Exeter, New Hampshire. [For the American 
Dillinghams in general, see Savage's General 
Dictionary.] 

At what period Quakerism found its way into 
the family I know not. Certainly my great- 
grandfather Ignatius was a Quaker, as all his 
descendants have been. My mother's ancestors 
(the Hoags) have also been Friends for some 
generations, I know not how many. My mother 
is the daughter of John Hoag and Elizabeth 
( Jilson) of Bolton, Massachusetts. 

I myself in natural endowments, physical 
and intellectual, belong to the Hoags, rather 
than the Dillinghams. My ancestors on both 
sides as a general thing have been patriarchs 
in respect of length of years and multitude of 
children. 

Till I was twelve years old I had the usual 
three months' schooling in the winter and three 
months' in summer. I recall distinctly most 
of the incidents of a journey made when I was 
seven years old, with my mother and brother 
to her old home in New Hampshire. We spent 
thus the greater part of the autumn, spending 
much time on the way going and returning in 
visiting various friends and relatives. 

At the age of twelve I was sent to Law- 



4 LIFE OF JOHN H. DILLINGHAM 

rence Academy in Falmouth village, four miles 
from home. Up to the time of going to college 
I attended the Academy during the spring and 
fall terms, walking the eight miles nearly every 
school-day. In the winter-time I went to the 
school of my own school-district until I was six- 
teen, when I commenced teaching school. My 
first teacher at the Academy was George Dodge. 
He soon left the school and Mr. George Moore, 
who is now a Gongregationalist minister in An- 
dover, was substituted. When I returned to the 
Academy in the spring, Mr. Moore had left, and 
his classmate at Williams, Mr. George Ellery 
Clarke, took his place, where he still faithfully 
labors. Whether to my mother or to Mr. Clarke 
I owe the most of my desire to get an education, 
I cannot tell. Certainly I owe much to the 
patience, encouragement, kindness, and interest 
in my case of Mr. Clarke. Having a taste for 
books and some ambition, I preferred the honor 
of being an educated man to other kinds of 
honor and gradually came to look beyond the 
Academy to the college as the best means of 
gaining an honorable prestige in society. Yet 
without this motive I think the desire of self- 
improvement was strong enough of itself to send 
me to college. To college I came at the age of 
nineteen, with twenty dollars in my pocket, will- 



CLASS BOOK OF 1862 5 

ing to see liow far through that money and 
Providence Avould carry me. School-keeping and 
college benefices under that Providence have put 
me through uninterruptedly and with little debt. 
The school I first taught was in a part of my 
native town called Shumet, eight miles from 
home. The boys were rude and the teacher in- 
experienced and homesick. Yet if I am able 
to believe the committee, " good satisfaction was 
given.'' I went through my next school the 
winter before coming to college in the school- 
district in which I had always resided. My 
next school I taught in Pocasset, a part of Sand- 
wich, six miles from home, in the winter of my 
Freshman year. The next winter I taught at 
home again, and have not taught school since. 

As to prizes, I have received a Detur {Bacon^s 
Essays) and a President's scholarship for the 
Junior year and divided with O. W. Holmes, 
Jr., in my Junior year, the Boylston prize for 
Greek Prose Composition. 

I have been a member of the Society of Chris- 
tian Brethren, and of the Temperance Society 
from the evening it was organized. Was presi- 
dent of the Temperance Society during my 
Junior year. I belong also to the Phi Beta 
Kappa Society. 

My chums have been Ben Major Davenport 



6 LIFE OF JOHN H. DILLINGHAM 

and J. Nelson Trask. With the former I lived 
during the Sophomore and with the latter during 
the Junior year. 

It is my plan to teach school or engage in some 
other lucrative occupation for a few years after 
graduating and then to enter upon the Medical 
Profession. Had my views of the Christian min- 
istry not received a bias from the influences 
by which I have been surrounded, I should prob- 
ably hardly hesitate to become a preacher. But 
could I afford to gratify my inclination I should 
try to lead the life of a scholar and literary man 
and to make my study useful to the world by 
writing or as I should prefer by public speak- 
ing. I have quite a fondness for the study of 
languages. 

As before intimated, I have always been a 
member of the Society of Friends. I entertain 
great respect for the vital principles of the 
Quaker creed, but I am so observant of tbe 
Quaker principle of discarding religious for- 
malities that I cannot conscientiously observe 
the Quaker formalities with regard to any 
peculiar demeanor, dress, or address. 
Cambridge, 26 May, 1862. 



CHAPTER II 

CHILDHOOD AND SCHOOL ENVIKONMENT 

It is the custom of modern times to seek an 
exi)lanation of men in a study of their heredity 
and environment. A great apostle may claim, 
" By the grace of God I am what I am," and 
yet elsewhere point out that " I am a Jew, 
born in Tarsus of Cilicia but brought up in 
[Jerusalem] at the feet of Gamaliel." The 
weight of birth and of education gave him a 
right to speak with authority, where otherwise 
he might not have been heard at all. In their 
proper place, which is of course in subordination 
to the principle of grace, these elements of birth 
and of education count decisively, even in re- 
ligious character. In the life of John H. 
Dillingham much that is distinctive and of 
special interest may be noted under both of 
these heads. 

He had a birthright membership in the Society 
of Friends. The Sandwich community into wliich 
he was born was largely descended from Pilgrim 

7 



8 LIFE OF JOHN H. DILLINGHAM 

Separatists. These had withdrawn from Ply- 
mouth in the seventeenth century after " assist- 
ing the Quakers and boldly opposing [their] 
persecution," by the authorities. A similar set- 
tlement at Sandwich, New Hampshire, had been 
gathered for much the same reason from the 
Lynn colony. Persecution, as many times be- 
fore in history, had been " the seed of the 
Church." Thus in two centres of the same name, 
a heroic type of Friend, growing as a graft on 
Pilgrim stock, made an ancestry of the most 
sterling qualities. John Dillingham had the 
good fortune to belong to both communities. 
His mother was Lydia Beede Hoag of Sandwich, 
New Hampshire, and his father Abram Dil- 
lingham of Cape Cod. 

The special marks of this Pilgrim-Quaker 
heredity have been more than once pointed out. 
A fine sense of tolerance, in protest against the 
Puritan spirit of persecution, was the very root 
of it. A strong loyalty to an evangelical exp*res- 
sion of faith was so well established that it was 
not appreciably disturbed by the conflicts of the 
first half of the nineteenth century in New Eng- 
land. A love of learning was deeply ingrained, 
and a sense that the amenities of life have a 
refining and elevating effect was found quite 
compatible with native simplicity and thought- 



CHILDHOOD AND SCHOOL-DAYS 9 

fulness. So with strength of character there 
was combined lovableness, and with originality 
a good measure of appreciation of the other 
man's point of view. How many worthy New 
England Friends with these characteristics 
adorn the pages of history! 

As an introduction to some study of the en- 
vironment into which John Dillingham was 
born, it may be well to make two quotations from 
a lecture given by him before his fellow-towns- 
men while he was still in college, 26th of 2d mo., 
1861. Speaking of the Sandwich stock he said, 
" Did I wish to find that spot on the earth where 
the English blood has been kept in its greatest 
purity, I should hardly go even to England to 
find it; I should on the whole stay where I am. 
No race of people, as a whole, are purer English 
than the Cape Cod people. The Pilgrims settled 
our county, and their posterity, ' perpetuating 
their names and their virtues,' have occupied it 
unmixed with Irish, Germans, or any other race. 
That strong English common-sense (which is 
not so common after all) is very common here. 
That genuine English pluck, in all its strength 
and purity, is the basis of the sterling worth of 
the sons and daughters of Cape Cod. Indeed, to 
use the words of a Cape Cod Republican in 
Faneuil Hall on the evening after the last Presi- 



10 LIFE OF JOHN H. DILLINGHAM 

dential election, ' where there 's a good deal of 
sand you must expect a good deal of grit/ '' 

A somewhat impassioned burst of eloquence 
concludes the lecture. It displays a loyalty for 
the land of his birth on the part of the Harvard 
Junior that never abated during his seventy years. 
" We are not ashamed of the land of our birth 
and adoption. For historic memories have hal- 
lowed every grain of her sand, rendering it more 
precious than gold-dust at the shrine of Patriot- 
ism and Liberty. It is fitting we are reminded 
to cherish a veneration for the land of our birth 
and a jealous regard for her sacred honor. That 
feeling surely incites her sons to resolve that if 
Cape Cod cannot be respected for her soil, she 
shall, indeed, be glorious in her men! Though 
we cannot proudly point to broad acres of lux- 
uriant growth of wheat, top-heavy with its 
bounteous yield, nor fields of towering corn, yet 
let our lives show that : 

'Man is the noller growth our soil supplies.' 

May that land which was the ' Cradle of New Eng- 
land,' the cradle indeed of Liberty, never cease 
because of the remissness of her children to be 
the ^ Right Arm of Massachusetts,' as in topo- 
graphical outline, so in the works and virtue of 



CHILDHOOD AND SCHOOL-DAYS 11 

her inhabitants. Precious is their birthright — 
doubly precious may their children's birthright 
be. May their lives perpetuate the memory of 
the sandy Cape Cod more gloriously than the 
' Sandy Pylos ' is signalized in epic song as the 
abode of Nestor; — with so much esteem for 
nobleness of purpose and purity of life, and so 
much of gratitude for useful service done, that 
in future generations it shall be no dishonor to 
Cape Cod that their graves are within her 
borders." 

Considering now the matter of environment 
more specifically the hardy New England atmos- 
phere has long been regarded as superior. Prin- 
cipal Herbert L. Rand of the Salem Normal 
School has thus analyzed its special merits: 
" The hand- work which it was necessary for the 
children to do in their homes, supplemented by 
the book- work in the school and the Bible study 
which all the children were compelled to do in 
the Sunday-school, were the principal means of 
developing a people whose strength has always 
demanded the wonder and admiration of the 
whole world." Hand- work in the home, book- 
work in the school, and Bible study in the " Sun- 
day-school," are the three elements that come 
to the fore in a review of John H. Dillingham's 
early life. 



12 LIFE OF JOHN H. DILLINGHAM 

First, as to hand-work in the home, it may 
be well to observe that in the middle of last 
century every country house was a centre of 
industrial activity. All the necessities and con- 
veniences of living were home-made. In the 
Falmouth neighborhood the nearness of the sea 
added another field of activity to the young life. 
Practically every boy of John Dillingham's 
circle knew how to sail a boat, to fish, and to 
gather clams. So the '' chores " of housekeeping, 
a measure of agricultural work, and the toil of 
the sea gave training to the motor activities of 
child life in that day that now at the best can 
be but poorly imitated in schemes of manual 
training in the school. John Dillingham's boy- 
hood home was not in any large sense a farm 
home. The original Dillingham estate might 
have included several hundred acres. Farming 
under such conditions could be conducted suc- 
cessfully even though the soil was sandy. The 
large families furnished the labor and a very 
considerable variety of products compensated in 
measure for a small return in some of the 
staples of agriculture. In the course of several 
generations, as the holdings became subdivided, 
families found themselves with comparatively 
small farms. Under intensive systems of cul- 
ture these can be made profitable but the de- 



CHILDHOOD AND SCHOOL-DAYS 13 

cades about 1850 were not distinguished by 
intensive farming. Abram Dillingham's share 
of his father's farm did not exceed eighty acres. 
When the portions of this in pine wood and the 
portions in salt marsh were deducted it left few 
acres of tillable soil. So it came about quite 
naturally that other fields of occupation at- 
tracted the father as giving prospect of better 
provision for the mother and the two sons. 
There had been four children, but two died in 
early childhood. We find the Falmouth family 
then much of the time composed of the mother 
and the two boys, John and Moses. Long jour- 
neys as a travelling salesman often kept the 
father absent for months. Much earlier than in 
many cases, the boys felt the responsibility of 
sharing in the necessary activities of field and 
garden and household. They entered into all of 
these as happy co-laborers with their indus- 
trious mother, and soon learned the pleasure of 
saving her by rising early or working late. It 
cannot be said, however, that any particular love 
of work in the soil grew out of this devotion. A 
row of growing onions in after-life made John 
Dillingham put his hand to his back with some 
playful allusion to the pain incident to weeding 
them. Doubtless, however, a fondness for home 
scenes — a lifelong attachment with him — ^was in 



14 LIFE OF JOHN H. DILLINGHAM 

part traceable to labor in these fields. The 
homestead in which he was born, and his father's 
house across the road from it, command striking 
views. Standing at the birthplace and looking 
south, Oyster Pond is in the foreground. Be- 
yond is Sippewissett and then Naushon Island. 
This is the largest of the Elizabeth Islands and 
in its varying colors is rightly designated as a 
great chameleon. Turning to the east. King's 
Hill, wooded with oak and pine, seems a sentinel 
for the range of hills bulwarking the shore to- 
ward Falmouth. Altogether the surface of the 
ground is so rolling and broken and the indenta- 
tions of the sea make so many curving beaches 
and sparkling bays that one would be callous 
indeed to natural beauty if he were not moved 
by the outlook. To John Dillingham these omni- 
present charms made a rich compensation for 
painful toil, and laid a sure foundation in his 
character of appreciation of the beautiful in 
nature. 

Turning, however, from a consideration of the 
" hand- work of the home," what shall be said 
of the "book-work of the school''? In view 
of the emphasis put upon education in the 
early Quaker practice it may at first thought 
seem strange that there was no Friends' 
school in the Falmouth neighborhood. As a 



CHILDHOOD AND SCHOOL-DAYS 15 

matter of fact, here as elsewhere, Friends main- 
tained schools quite in advance of the public 
school system. When the States organized 
district schools, in not a few instances thej 
combined with the Friends' schools already 
established and in a sense superseded them. In 
some communities the teacher and a majority of 
the scholars would be Friends. John Dilling- 
ham often said he had never had the privileges 
of a Friends' school for a single day. He had, 
liowever, been more than once under a Friend 
as teacher and associated with a goodly number 
of children in the district school who were mem- 
bers with him of Falmouth meeting. Attend- 
ance at the district school during the three 
months of the winter term and the three months 
of the summer term continued until the age of 
twelve, when, to use his own language, he " com- 
menced daily walks to LawTence Academy in 
the village [of Falmouth] four miles from home, 
continuing at this school in the spring and fall 
terms till the age of nineteen." The six years 
included in this period develop the key-note of 
John Dillingham's life. He becomes a scholar 
with a positive conviction that scholarship pre- 
sents worthy avenues of service in the world. 
Whatever taunts any might utter in regard to 
this choice, and his young life as we shall see 



16 LIFE OF JOHN H. DILLINGHAM 

was not free from galling taunts, none could 
accuse him of choosing an easy path. The daily- 
walks of eight miles to and from school, the 
determined application to lessons in order to 
maintain a worthy standing in scholarship, the 
willing devotion to home duties to relieve a be- 
loved mother, present a picture of determination 
and endurance rarely if ever rivalled even in 
New England. This picture was made most real 
as he would smilingly point out to his children 
the very stones in the garden patch which he 
had used as weights to keep a Latin book open, 
so that he could study as he moved back and 
forth in clearing weeds from long rows of onions ! 

One of his schoolmates at Lawrence Academy, 
Harriet E. Hammond, has written some recol- 
lections of those days in a letter replying to 
inquiries about John Dillingham as a schoolboy. 

" I have had my thinking-cap on since I re- 
ceived your letter, but, oh, it has been so long 
ago, that I am afraid I cannot give you much 
of interest. . . . How I wish I could, for of all 
the class of boys in school no one stood so high 
in my estimation as John Dillingham. The diffi- 
cult problems I had to contend with were often- 
times made so plain when John explained them 
out to me. He was a scholar in every sense of 
the word and I heard George E. Clark, who was 



CHILDHOOD AND SCHOOL-DAYS 17 

our teacher, say that he never knew him to have 
an imperfect recitation. Honest in all his work ! 
yes, he was the soul of honor and the pranks 
and foolish tricks some of us had, were entirely 
unknown to him. He was ever ready to assist 
those who were not as bright as he, was always 
kind, and his wit often made a hearty laugh. 

" I remember a composition he wrote at one 
time on the value of a good education. It was 
fine and Mr. Clark said so much about it that 
it made the rest of us feel that we could not 
write at all. It was easy to see that it was 
his aim in life to obtain the education which 
would count for great things in afterlife. How 
well he succeeded you well know. He was never 
at a loss for an answer. Hannah Gould, who 
was one of us, said one day you have got to 
get up early in the morning to get ahead of 
John. . . . 

" One afternoon after school six or eight of 
us girls planned the next morning to go up just 
for a walk and meet the West Falmouth boys as 
we called them. 

" So we did and sat down on the stone-wall 
of the cemetery to wait for them. We were hav- 
ing a real jolly time and when the boys got 
along John was the last one to speak, — ' It is a 
quiet place in there but it would be better for 



18 LIFE OF JOHN H. DILLINGHAM 

the home and the school if you had to go in one 
at time ! ' 

" At one time one of the girls said something 
to me which made me a little indignant, so John 
was my comforter and said : ^ Harriet, thou 
must not be offended if one throws salt at thee. 
It will not hurt thee unless thou hast sore 
places M '' 

Fortunately we have access to the mental and 
emotional side of this unfolding character, in 
the artless confessions of a college theme. Per- 
haps it was in the Sophomore year of his Har- 
vard course that this assigned subject set him 
at self -revelation : " Circumstances in your per- 
sonal history (or in that of your family or the 
place you live in), to which you look back with 
pride or pleasure. '^ It seems appropriate to 
quote the whole of the theme. 

" A review of my uneventful life discovers a 
few things that are hardly remarkable in them- 
selves, but are of consequence only in view of the 
impression made by them upon my mind or their 
office in the forming of my present character. 

" It is with pleasure that I look back upon 
a journey with my mother and younger brother 
which we took when I was seven years old to 
the central part of New Hampshire, visiting 
many friends and relatives on the way. Then, 



CHILDHOOD AND SCHOOL-DAYS 19 

having been in the world for so short a time, 
when life was new and many things strange to 
me even among the most familiar scenes, what 
increase was there to my wonder and youthful 
joy, in the exciting variety of travel and occa- 
sional sojourn in city and country. I look back 
upon scenes of almost unalloyed pleasure, as T 
reflect upon my two months' stay at my grand- 
father's, rambling over the fields, shaking the 
ripe apples from the heavy-laden branches and 
contemplating the sublime mountains, — those 
mysterious things that Peter Parley's Geography 
had told me of before, and which I had wanted 
to see in their reality. 

" Proud were the anticipations raised within 
me when my father proposed my going to the 
Academy which was in the village four miles 
from home, and walking to school mornings and 
home again nights. I was then twelve years old 
and continued going to the Academy, except in 
the winter term, for six years. I look back with 
a little of pride upon my history during that 
period, because I was not put down by the 
taunts of not one, but nearly all of the neigh- 
bors, who hinted that I had ^ better be at work 
and earning something' and asked whether I 
expected to be minister, lawyer, or president. 
But I look back upon that time rather with 



20 LIFE OF JOHN H. DILLINGHAM 

pleasure because I was under the guidance of 
a kind teacher who did much to encourage and 
stimulate me to advancement in learning and 
at length to a little ambition to rise by means 
of learning, — a feeling which would not rest 
satisfied with anything short of a collegiate 
education, or even with that. 

" It is with deep pleasure that I look nearly 
three years back to a vacation, when, my father 
being away, I was working much of the time 
alone at hay-making. At times in those lone 
seasons the spirit of God operated within me, 
admonishing me thenceforth to give up the 
world, and to become a follower of Christ. At 
length I yielded, to my great peace — a peace that 
abides with me while I keep to the light that 
is given me. In view of these dispensations of 
Providence to which I look back with pride or 
pleasure, I feel a new responsibility to the great 
Giver for the right use of them. I now look 
back with some pride and pleasure upon diffi- 
culties surmounted in a severe discipline which 
I underwent for one winter when I was sixteen 
years old, in teaching my first school, in a rude, 
uncivilized district in the woods, with several 
reckless boys older than myself to take care of, 
while all the time I was distressed under a heavy 
weight of homesickness without sympathy from 



CHILDHOOD AND SCHOOL-DAYS 21 

men, but being led by these trials to look for 
consolation in Jesus who had also suffered. 
Recognizing these and all past trials as whole- 
some blessings, I would look back with pride 
and pleasure upon them. 

" While my heart was yet tender and suscep- 
tible, my mother imbued it with religious sen- 
timents, chiefly by twilight conversations on 
holy things with her two children. I look back 
with the most solid pleasure upon that sowing 
of good seed. Its influence has been with me 
in some small degree thus far, and has rendered 
one trifling incident of vast good to me on ac- 
count of a victory to which I look back with 
pride and pleasure. A boy with evil intent had 
swung a tin pail against the side of my head; 
with revengeful rage I pursued him; my con- 
science remonstrated, so that at length, even 
while on the pursuit, I was led to forgive him 
and overtake him in a spirit of love, and with 
the Divine favor felt in my heart. When I wish 
to have an idea of what it is for one to feel the 
Grace of God within him, I recur to the memory 
of that experience in my own heart.'' 

Thus we have not only the picture our im- 
aginations can draw of the youthful John Dil- 
lingham in home and in school, but an artless 
confession of the influences that had gripped 



22 LIFE OF JOHN H. DILLINGHAM 

him as he stood on the threshold of manhood. 
One further source of these influences remains 
to be noted under the head defined by Principal 
Eand as " the Bible study which all the children 
were compelled to do in the Sunday-school." 
Whatever might have been the general practice 
of Friends in the Falmouth neighborhood near 
1850, John Dillingham had part in the advan- 
tages of the neighborhood " Sunday-school." 
Much more than now these were quite strictly 
classes in Bible study. Considerable portions 
of Scripture were committed to memory and the 
narratives of the Old and New Testament were 
actually learned. In later life as a teacher of 
Scripture in a large day school, John more than 
once took some account of the portions com- 
mitted to memory and the points of history 
required in the lessons of the modern " Sunday- 
school." It was his conclusion not only that 
fifty years had very generally changed the char- 
acter of these schools until they exacted very 
little work, but that the weekly lessons required 
in Friends' schools fully covered the ground 
originally prescribed for First-day recitation. 
Sure it was that his mind was well stored with 
Scripture so that he often reminded his friends 
of the steward " that brought out things new 
and old from the treasury." His old " Sunday- 



CHILDHOOD AND SCHOOL-DAYS 23 

school " teacher, Martha L, Butler, has written 
the following recollections of those days of early 
training: "I have very pleasant memories of 
John as a boy in my Sunday-school class. He 
was a model scholar and I think his influence 
was felt over the others as I seldom had to 
reprove them when he was present. ... I once 
heard a minister, who was addressing a class of 
teachers, offer in his prayer these words : * Grant 
we may not increase responsibility without a 
corresponding faith.' I trust my efforts were 
put forth in faith as in John's case it was easy 
to do. I seem to see him now sitting in front 
of me with the others on either side and eyes 
fixed on mine listening to the truths of God's 
word. When a question was put to him he 
stopped to think and then gave an intelligent 
answer. He had a very retentive mind, as what 
he learned he always remembered, and improved 
his powers for the good of others as knowledge 
and wisdom increased. In speaking of my in- 
terest in John to a day-school teacher (Adelaide 
Gifford) she said, ' Yes, John had a long head.' 
" In later years I have felt instructed by his 
teachings in our meetings and thought the 
teacher had become the pupil. One of his day- 
schoolmates, George W. Fish, says of him 
he was always very studious, thus preparing 



24 LIFE OF JOHN H. DILLINGHAM 

himself for after-years of usefulness. He had 
a good and intelligent mother who, no doubt, 
taught him those habits that afterwards formed 
so lovely and noble a character." 

So at nineteen years of age we find John Dil- 
lingham entertaining the prospect of college. 
Behind him the years had been full of struggle, 
but nothing of hard work at home or of a toil- 
some daily walk of eight miles for the privileges 
of the Academy had presented itself to his mind 
as hardship. Indeed it had all spelled oppor- 
tunity to him. He had taken it step by step, and 
the conviction had become fixed in his mind at 
last that the collegiate stage might be possible 
for him. The meagre savings upon which he 
could count in the home coffers would pay a 
term's tuition, but would leave him less than 
twenty dollars for living expenses and in- 
cidentals. Many a less courageous soul would 
have been dismayed at this prospect. John 
Dillingham went forward in it without faltering. 



CHAPTER III 

AT HARVARD COLLEGE 

The changes in Harvard in the fifty years 
since John Dillingham entered it in 1858 very 
much exceed the changes during the first two 
hundred years of its history. None the less the 
new environment was impressive to the young 
countryman of nineteen, as will appear in ex- 
tracts from letters after he was fairly in har- 
ness. As an introduction to these the report he 
made to his parents and brother when he went up 
for entrance examinations will be of interest : 

" Third-day," he says, " we assembled at 20 
minutes past 7 and the examinations continued || 

until two in the afternoon. There were 122 ap- " 

plicants. We were divided into classes of 20, 
and each class went into some room, where there 
was a tutor ready to examine them. We were 
examined in six studies to-day, going to six dif- 
ferent tutors, and on seven studies yesterday. 
. . . Before and after commencement yesterday 
I went in search of a room. (Having received 
my certificate of admission at 20 minutes of 8 

25 







26 LIFE OF JOHN H. DILLINGHAM 

the evening before, and a bond to be filled out.) 
I found that a moderate price for Cambridge of 
furnished rooms was |1.50 per week, unfurnished 
J50 a year. In the college buildings two chums 
pay |40 for an unfurnished room. At length 
I succeeded in getting a nice pleasant little room 
in a house just finished, for |25 a year, if I 
should be out three months in the winter teach- 
ing; otherwise it would be $30. I am to furnish 
and have the care of it." 

Once well established in such quarters and the 
routine of daily life in passing about from one 
lecture-room to another fairly learned, the effect 
of being a member of a larger group than he had 
heretofore known is manifest and the pomp and 
circumstance of the most important educational 
institution in the country made a marked impres- 
sion upon him. A view of this is given in the fol- 
lowing quotations from letters to his parents and 
brother. The first is dated 10th mo. 9, 1858, and 
in style was probably in imitation of some Latin 
or Greek he was then studying. " O thou whom 
it may concern, thyself standing on the stone 
steps of University Hall on some fine morning 
before breakfast taking a reverential view of 
the surrounding college buildings! From the 
cupola of the one nearest before thee the peal 
of a bell starts forth. Thou lookest up there to 



AT HARVARD COLLEGE 27 

see what it meaiieth ; but when again thou lookest 
down, the scene is changed. ^ What meaneth the 
sight before me, all the paths, all the ground 
thickly scattered o'er with smart-stepping, 
spruce-looking young men, all the multitude 
coming towards me ! ' Thou rushest in, up- 
stairs, up still another flight, turnest in to the 
right and lo! thou art in a gallery: but in thy 
step, below thee and around thee, each one head- 
ing for his own seat, all brisk-walking and ere 
the end of five wond'ring minutes a far-extend- 
ing expanse of heads is spread out before thee, 
of those same young men sitting, in listening to 
the reading of the Scriptures by the sonorous 
voice of Dr. Huntington. At the end of fifteen 
minutes all again is desolate, each has wended 
his way to his own place of daily study." 
Doubtless the onrush of this earnest life found 
many " wond'ring minutes " as prelude to the 
adjustment that finally made John Dillingham 
feel at home in the Harvard atmosphere. In 
7th mo., 1859, the first year of college life was 
well past, but the sense of awe somewhat in- 
dicated in the previous quotation was still a 
present experience. So he writes to his brother, 
" I would rather not be at home Quarterly Meet- 
ing time, because I am a college student. Bed- 
ford folks would expect much of me in the way 



28 LIFE OF eTOHN H. DILLINGHAM 

of appearance and conversation. I feel that a 
profound responsibility rests upon me as a col- 
legian, in respect to these things, which respon- 
sibility, being yet a Freshman, I am not able to 
discharge. We will see whether next year, writ- 
ing themes, speaking declamations, and being a 
member of the Institute of 1776, will give any 
better qualifications." 

One learns with much interest that a dominant 
note of this "smart-stepping, spruce-looking" set 
of young men with whom John Dillingham found 
himself was their poverty. Justice Oliver W. 
Holmes referring in a letter to an address by 
Moorfield Storey on " Harvard in the 60's," says 
that he remembers it " for the excellent and im- 
portant remark that we were all poor. It was 
a great advantaged' Quoting from the address 
thus referred to, the following may make the 
life which John Dillingham shared for four 
years take on some marks of reality. " If," says 
Moorfield Storey, " I were asked to state in one 
word the great difference between our time and 
the present I should answer ^ Simplicity.' In 
every respect, in great things and small, our lives 
and our problems were far simpler than those 
of the student who is now at Harvard. 

" We enjoyed in the first place the in- 
estimable advantage of poverty, that most ef- 



AT HARVARD COLLEGE 29 

ficient nurse of virtue in the young. . . . We 
had, of course, our rich men, but so large a 
majority of us were poor that the poor men set 
the fashion, and the rich adopted their stand- 
ards. As a rule we did our own work, built our 
own fires, blacked our own boots, and ... I 
can still hear the splashing on the stairs, mingled 
with frequent explosions of lively dissatisfaction, 
which used to accompany the ascent of my chum 
as late on winter nights he would stumble in 
the dark with our two pails of water up the 
three flights which led to our room at the top 
of Massachusetts." 

As appears by the letter first quoted, John 
Dillingham began his life at Harvard by lodging 
in a room apart from the college. This made 
his manner of life in providing his own fare less 
under notice, and enabled him to curtail expenses 
very considerably. The second year he received 
a college monitorship which paid him sixty dol- 
lars. He then joined his chum Davenport in 
renting a room in Graduates' Hall at a cost of 
twenty-six dollars a year each. In this situa- 
tion, the two young men provided their own 
fare for most of the Sophomore year. It was 
an irregular way of living that had no merit 
but its economy. That the hardships of it were 
at times relieved and a touch of humorous pride 



30 LIFE OF JOHN H. DILLINGHAM 

exhibited in the result will be clear from a letter 
to his brother as follows : " We have had a 
Q. M. [Quarterly Meeting] dinner to-day [IStli 
of 3d mo., I860]. Those two Southerners of 
whom I used to speak had many times been tell- 
ing Major [his partner in housekeeping] that 
they were coming sometime to take dinner witli 
us, and see if we could live nearly as well as if we 
boarded out, for they did n't believe we could. 
So with my recommendation, Major yesterday 
invited them to dine with us to-day and bought 
a turkey, stuffed it according to rule, and boiled 
it in a vessel he had made on purpose for boil- 
ing turkeys, and bought and prepared several 
other things which will appear by the following 
list of dishes which we had for dinner to-day: 
Boiled turkey, which was cooked superbly; beef- 
steak, about the best the Southerners had ever 
tasted, as was the coffee, mashed potato, white 
and graham bread, cranberry, honey, butter, 
cheese, cream, oyster-soup (hot), sponge cake, 
mince and apple pie, oyster crackers, and 
various ' greevances.' The Southerners felt like 
^ they would die of eating ' ; they liked our way 
of living ' a heap better than boarding out ' and 
wanted us to take them as boarders.'' In this 
picture there is little hint of the daily self-denial 
which John Dillingham practised during the 



AT HARVARD COLLEGE 31 

first two years of his college course. The room 
he first rented was unfurnished. A table and 
chair and finally a lounge for a bed for some 
time represented his household goods. How and 
where he slept until the bed was found he never 
disclosed. Once or twice he was heard to tell 
the story of the purchase of the lounge. He had 
found it on sale at a second-hand place for two 
dollars. In order to save transportation he 
went at nightfall the two miles to the store, paid 
the amount, put the couch on his head, and 
started out to carry it home. It soon became 
very heavy and he was obliged to put it on the 
ground and to lie down upon it to rest. A 
repetition of this performance, probably a dozen 
times, brought him to the door of his lodging 
with a jubilant feeling that he had completed 
the required furnishing of his room. At the 
approach of colder weather, however, another 
necessity put his slender resources to a severe 
test. He refers to this incident in a home letter 
dated 10 mo., 20th, 1858. "On Second-day evening 
I bought my stove, paying the man a ninepence 
extra for sending it to my room. It has not 
been cool enough for a fire yet, but has grown 
warmer for the past week, so that I have some 
days studied with my coat off again. I intend 
to speak for some coal and kindling-wood to- 



32 LIFE OF JOHN H. DILLINGHAM 

morrow and let it be charged on my term bill 
since I liave not seven dollars left, having been 
obliged to pay nearly three dollars for books. . . . 

" On my way to Boston yesterday to get some 
second-hand books, I bought a good stove-pipe 
in Cambridgeport (at the store where I have 
saved what money I have saved in buying my 
furniture) Avhich has two joints and an elbow, 
for* sixty- two cents." 

This little capital of seven dollars made the 
reserve fund from which living expenses must be 
met during the term. The main part of the 
necessary food came from Falmouth and repre- 
sented a fond mother's determination to put her 
son forward in the privileges of collegiate train- 
ing. She availed herself of opportunities to 
forward provisions by friends travelling from 
Falmouth to Boston either by checking trunks 
or sending packages to the business office of a 
cousin near the station. In one case the letter 
announcing such an invoice was delayed several 
days, with a result reported by John Dillingham 
as follows: " The things were not so much hurt 
after all, only four of the sweet potatoes being 
rotten, and some apples specked. I finished all 
but one of the apple pies before they became 
uneatable and for the past week have been living 
upon bread and mince pie, eating rather more 



AT HARVARD COLLEGE 33 

of pie than bread. The bread became uneatable 
by this morning so that I threw away the re- 
maining two and one half loaves." The brown 
bread of that day apparently, as well as of this, 
had good keeping qualities, and at times his 
larder was reduced to a supply of it and of 
apples that had been shipped from Falmouth by 
the barrel. Such a menu for a week or more 
without intermission maintained his strength 
and Avorking energy, so that he could report 
himself " very well." Finally, however, the con- 
dition became unbearable. He wrote his mother 
of a plan to take meals at a regular boarding- 
house and added the significant sentence, " I 
should n't then be casting longing glances at 
every eating-house I see." 

It would be a mistake, however, to suppose 
that the condition of poverty pictured by Storey, 
referred to by Judge Holmes, and so concretely 
illustrated by eTohn Dillingham indicated that 
the Harvard students of that day came from 
homes of actual want. As a rule an abundance 
of food and other necessities abounded in the 
homes. It was lack of money, that is described 
as poverty. In a sense and because of contrast 
with home conditions, this made the grit and 
endurance with which John Dillingham braved 
the college hardships the more conspicuous. 



34 LIFE OF JOHN H. DILLINGHAM 

However, he never wrote of them as hardships, 
nor in after-life referred to them in conversa- 
tion as though they represented anything heroic 
or even noteworthy. To the average collegian 
of the twentieth century such conditions of liv- 
ing as Harvard boys of the 'sixties faced bravely 
would seem to be insurmountable difl&culties. 

When we turn from the more material side 
of college life to the special privileges of college 
training we find that John Dillingham, from the 
very first, was determined upon securing the full- 
est measure of advantage possible to him. He 
had the usual experience of finding the college 
standards of recitation so unlike those of school 
that his first quarter's marks chagrined him 
sorely. We should not call them bad but they 
were much below his ambition. Directly after, 
however, there is note of being publicly com- 
mended for a Latin recitation and of a " perfect 
mark " in one or more lessons. The climax of 
such mark of scholarship came in the Junior 
year when he competed with Seniors for the 
Boylston prize for Greek composition. The 
fifty dollars was divided with Oliver Wendell 
Holmes, Jr., of the more advanced class. This 
and previous successes made the financial bur- 
dens after the first year somewhat lighter. 
College loans for promising students became 



AT HARVARD COLLEGE 35 

available, and a monitorship was bestowed upon 
him. This gave him a small salary, as noted in 
the letter quoted above, in return for some simple 
duties in regulating dormitory life. It had an 
effect also in making his situation known to 
the staff so that he had no great difficulty in 
being excused three terms during the four years 
to earn some money in teaching district school. 
At graduation he was elected to membership in 
the Phi Beta Kappa Society, which was then more 
of a distinct recognition of scholarship than now. 
Apart from direct college associations and 
class-room instruction, John Dillingham's years 
at Harvard covered stirring times in our coun- 
try's history and he was not a little moved by 
public events. We have references in his letters 
to much in this line. The two extracts that 
follow will possibly suffice to show him in these 
relations. Under date of 18th of 9th mo., 1859 : 
" Doubtless you have seen by the papers that 
yesterday there was to be a great celebration 
at the Dedication of the Webster Statue in front 
of the State House; how that all sorts of digni- 
taries were to march in the grand procession, 
including the students of Harvard; that Pro- 
fessor Felton was to present the statue with one 
of his admired speeches, to Major Lincoln; that 
Governor Banks and the like were to speak ; and 



36 LIFE OF JOHN H. DILLINGHAM 

finally there was to be an oration by Edward 
Everett. 

" The evening before our class met and voted 
not to go in the procession. Although I voted 
to go, yet I should not have joined the procession 
myself, since the class was to wear black stove- 
pipe hats^ — silk or beaver. 

" But it rained steadily all day yesterday. 
When I got ready, at half-past two, I walked 
into Boston, and saw great preparations made, 
by covering the ground in front of the State 
House with a level platform, but all the space 
was empty, and there was a notice posted that 
the gathering was to assemble in Music Hall; 
thither I went, and worked my way in. Everett 
was speaking; he had begun a quarter of an hour 
before and spoke an hour and a quarter longer; 
his oration was a eulogy on Webster. Certain 
passages in the oration were so thrilling with 
eloquence that the assembled thousands not only 
cheered by clapping hands, but they roared right 
out with shouts. I have not time now to give 
the sense of those outbursts." Toward the con- 
clusion of the same letter some more of the im- 
pression made by this memorable occasion is 
indicated by the following: "I was forced to 
pronounce Everett the greatest of living orators. 
Perhaps this oration on Webster may be the 



AT HARVARD COLLEGE 37 

greatest of his productions. If glory is every- 
thing he would better die right off before he 
does anything to spoil the effect of this great 
masterpiece. I heard a student tell that this 
was to be Everett's last oratorical effort." 

The second extract has reference to the famous 
oration by Charles Sumner on " The True Gran- 
deur of Nations." John Dillingham was in com- 
pany with John Henry Grossman upon that 
occasion. " We lounged on the Common," he 
says, " and saw the different military companies 
form and afterwards took a good position on 
Beacon Street where we beheld the whole pro- 
cession. It went by pretty fast, and it took an 
hour and twenty minutes for it all to pass by. 
I judge that the procession was about five miles 
long. There were cavalry, foot-soldiers, Free 
Masons, Irish societies, mechanics' associations, 
temperance societies. Odd Fellows, artillery, ex- 
press companies, etc., etc., etc. The oration by 
Charles Sumner was to commence at three 
o'clock in Music Hall, after some preliminary 
music, prayer, etc. So at half-past two we went 
down to see if we could get a position near the 
entrance, so as to go in after the city govern- 
ment and those who had tickets had entered. 
We stood there two hours and a half in a 
crowd, long after those from the procession had 



38 LIFE OF JOHN H. DILLINGHAM 

entered, and at last John Henry gave it up in 
despair, and left in order to reach the five o'clock 
train. But I told him I was going to be faithful 
to the end, and in a few minutes after J. H. left, 
the policeman began to let in one and another 
without tickets, and so I went in and reached 
a good position in the hall about five minutes 
before Sumner commenced his oration. I heard 
it all and it was grand. I will send it home." 

One other influence apart from the college 
routine contributed an important element to 
John Dillingham's future career during his Har- 
vard course. From the beginning of his residence 
in Cambridge, he was watchful of opportunities 
to visit relatives in Lynn and to time these visits 
so as to be at Friends' Meeting. Twice in 1862 
he mentions the services of public Friends 
and it is easy to detect a vein of sympathetic 
appreciation of these opportunities. Thus to 
his brother Moses, the 2d of v mo., 1862 : 

" Last Seventh day I walked to Lynn, and 
arose next morning with Leeds [the late Pro- 
fessor Albert Leeds] at half-past four and 
walked over to Nahant, returning in time for 
meeting. We had a splendid time and are going 
again. Ducks were swimming all over the water. 
We watched one a great while as it floated lei- 
surely near us by the shore. Finally we got 



AT HARVARD COLLEGE 39 

pretty near it and threw stones at it. I hit it 
on the back of the neck when it gave forth a 
peculiar sound, even the sound of wood. It was 
a decoy, and we had been sold! 

" Second-day evening I went into Charles 
Coffin's meeting at Father Taylor's Prayer Meet- 
ing. The company sat fixed with attention while 
Charles Coffin spoke, for his manner was as 
earnest as that of any of them and he had in 
addition his own peculiar brilliancy. Father 
Taylor, who thinks everything of Charles Coffin, 
said after meeting that it was easy to see the 
advantage of Charles Coffin's having been a 
Methodist before he was a Quaker — that these 
3Iethodist-Quakers are the best preachers. He 
thinks we need more of their zeal and they more 
of our quiet." 

The second instance is also in a letter to his 
brother, dated 14th of iv, '62 : " Rachel Howland 
had a meeting in Boston yesterday. Charles 
Coffin of Maine was there and preached and 
prayed. Rachel Howland did finely. All were 
much interested. . . . Governor Andrew honore'd 
us by attending the meeting. At noon we went 
out to Lynn, where in addition to the other 
ministers was Sibyl Jones. In the evening many 
Friends gathered at Charles Coffin's. There 1 
had a very pleasant interview with Rachel How- 



40 LIFE OF JOHN H. DILLINGHAM 

land, who wished to consult about the morality 
of Harvard life, with reference to sending her 
son there. Rev. J. C. Fletcher was there and 
he entertained the company admirably for over 
an hour with an account of the Waldenses of 
the Alpine Valleys, where he got his wife, 
after which we had a sitting, in which Eachel 
and Sibyl spoke and C. Coffin prayed." 

Doubtless a definitely chronological history of 
the Harvard days, with pictures of the presidents 
and professors, would be much more satisfactory 
than these few glimpses. The letters at com- 
mand afford no basis for such a history. There 
is a brief reference to the change of presidents, 
and in one letter to his parents he tells them 
that his brother Moses went with him to a lec- 
ture by Professor Agassiz. Further than this 
we are left to imagine the details incident to 
four years of strenuous struggle for the best 
that Harvard could offer. Near the conclusion 
in a letter to his brother the following seems to 
point to a restrained sense of triumph, under 
dute of 5 mo. 8th, 1862 : " Six weeks to Class 
Day and four weeks more of recitations. We 
shall have something to do." His parents and 
brother shared in the privileges of Commence- 
ment week, and so there are no letters to draw 
upon for accounts of it. 



CHAPTER IV 

TEACHING APPOINTMENTS 

The young men to whose names Harvard 
affixed the degree of A.B. in 1862, found them.- 
selves in a most unusual situation. The country 
had crossed the threshold of Civil War, and to 
many of them there seemed to be a strong call 
of duty to join the ranks and to fight for the 
Union. The few who did not feel this sense of 
duty, as well as that smaller number who had 
a conscientious objection to going to war, found 
themselves much in demand for other calls. 
Prior to graduation John Dillingham had taught 
several terms in district schools. Now an open- 
ing in a military boarding-school at Brattleboro, 
Vermont, was urged upon him. It was one of 
the best esteemed boarding-s<!hools of that day, 
and he accepted the position as assistant to the 
Principal, C. A. Miles. For two years ensuing 
he occupied this post. His natural bent, so far 
as he knew it, was toward the profession of 
medicine, but a stern necessity to earn money 
at once, carried him into teaching. A measure 

. 41 



42 LIFE OF JOHN H. DILLINGHAM 

of success at Brattleboro quite beyond his own 
expectation seemed to settle his life career and 
for forty years until the day of his death he held 
teaching positions. 

There was much, however, in the routine 
of boarding-school life that was distasteful to 
him. The years at Brattleboro also were 
years of unsettlement, not alone as to life 
prospects, but as to the fundamentals of the 
religious life. The added resources of college 
training, not only in knowledge but in experi- 
ence with men, had in some measure obscured 
the tender impressions of the " Grace of God " 
pictured in his childhood recollections. In other 
words, anything like a traditional faith had 
vanished before his enlarged intellectual vision. 
The vital spark remained, and finally revived 
into a new life and so transmuted all his rich 
store of knowledge and experience into religious 
character. That, however, is a chapter by itself 
and it is referred to in connection with his school 
appointments only because in an important sense 
it gave color to his course during those years. 

The death of his brother Moses toward the 
end of 1863 accentuated his religious unrest, and 
under Providence finally became one of the in- 
struments in settling his doubts. The two 
brothers were closely bound together, and as 



TEACHING APPOINTMENTS 43 

Jolin was the elder in years and college experi- 
ence his relations to Moses were almost paternal. 
Upon entering Exeter in 1862 Moses had been 
assigned to a class one year below the point of 
his ambition. The following is John's view of 
the case: 

" In these two years of preparation thou wilt 
make twice as much progress in knowledge and 
development as is generally made at College, and 
when in College thou wilt make twice the im- 
provement thou wouldst have gained if thou 
hadst entered the Middle Class [the class of his 
ambitions]. I may safely say thy education has 
been trebled by taking another year of prepara- 
tion. It is time gained and not lost. I have 
not a doubt that the years of thy life are made 
longer by taking this step. For with the trouble 
and vexation consequent upon entering both the 
Academy and College beyond thy depth, that 
peace of mind which ensures long life would be 
destroyed and thou wouldst fret away I know 
not how many years of lifetime in disappoint- 
ment and despondency. Thou hast taken a year 
and put it at compound interest. — Besides, thy 
Academic and College days will be the happiest 
of thy life, and every year which can be added 
to them will be a blessing, — a clear gain in posi- 
tive enjoyment. Why does young America wish 



44 LIFE OF JOHN H. DILLINGHAM 

to rush into life so early? Simply to be acquir- 
ing money early. But this life is a time for 
improvement not acquisition. Hereafter is the 
time to acquire, here we are to improve and 
prepare ourselves in intellect and in soul for 
the proper time of enjoyment which is hereafter. 
— A man is still young at thirty-seven, and he 
is quite young at twenty-seven. A Dillingham 
is very young at twenty-seven,— hardly mature 
enough to enter business. Dillinghams are long- 
lived and mature slowly ; they are not at their 
prime till fifty, their boyhood reaches to their 
thirtieth year." 

Apart from school routine the Brattleboro 
circle was one of pleasant friendships and asso- 
ciations. He copied the following from the Con- 
gregationalist to inform his mother of his 
environment : 

" Brattleboro is a town from which the most 
rational persons come away fairly raving about 
the beautiful scenery in which they have revelled. 
To my eye nothing was more charming than the 
handsome and manly youths of the Military 
School, whose behavior, both in the street and 
at church, would have made an old philosopher 
ashamed of his famous libel, ^ Boys are of all 
wild beasts the most audacious, fierce, plotting, 
and intractable.' " 



TEACHING APPOINTMENTS 45 

The school household was presided over by the 
mother of the Principal. She and her two 
daughters were very friendly with the young 
teacher and much pleasant intercourse with them 
is referred to in home letters. He became well 
acquainted with the Higginson family and the 
mother of Col. Thos. Wentworth Higginson (now 
of literary fame) loaned him her son's letters, 
written in the form of a diary from the seat of 
war. 

Toward the conclusion of his Brattleboro ex- 
perience he was confronted with the prospect of 
being drafted into the army. He wrote to his 
mother : " I have seen in this Avar no farther 
than this with reference to my taking part in 
it, namely, that I, myself, could not aim a mus- 
ket at a man's life." When finally the call came 
it was from Falmouth and as his legal residence 
liad been some time in Vermont he was exempted 
on this ground. In a letter printed in the 
Phoenix, a Brattleboro paper, under date of Cam- 
bridge, 14th of v, 1865, his view of war and 
of the feelings engendered by war find a some- 
what spicy expression. 

" Dear Phoenix : The printed epistle from 
Brattleboro which is hailed with a hearty wel- 
come by your correspondent every Saturday 
morning can no longer be resisted and must have 



46 LIFE OF JOHN H. DILLINGHAM 

an answer. But my pen cannot be restrained 
from running into these words of this morning's 
news — ' Jeff. Davis is captured ! ' Cambridgians 
breakfasted on the news with great gusto. 
Everybody seems to know just what to do with 
Jeff. Davis. The assassination settled that case 
in a very few minutes. Mother Eve having long 
ago eaten of the fruit of the apple-tree and swal- 
lowed the seeds of this civil war, we, forsooth, 
are to pay the devil in his own coin by suspend- 
ing Jefferson Davis as the ripest fruit of that 
transaction, on the sourest apple-tree we can 
find. But looking at the apple-tree thus wist- 
fully, we may perhaps on close scrutiny discover 
in ourselves a hereditary likeness to our tempted 
Mother Eve, ourselves being tempted of evils 
bearing the aspect of virtues. While patriotism 
cannot be swelled to dimensions too full, yet 
bloodthirstiness we cannot stifle closely enough. 
^ Let Justice be done though the heavens fall,^ 
only let it be pure justice and not revenge in 
its garb. In short, let that mind be in us which 
was also in Abraham Lincoln, and that shall be 
the righteousness to exalt his nation, and it shall 
be his own most fitting monument 

As will be observed this letter was written 
from Cambridge whence he had gone upon resign- 
ing his position at Brattleboro. The Principal of 



TEACHING APPOINTMENTS 47 

the school parted with him most reluctantly, but 
the exactions of boarding-school life had become 
unbearable to him. At Cambridge some tutor- 
ing and a coveted opportunity for further study 
made a prelude to his engagement to go to 
Haverford College. The further study was re- 
warded by the college with the A.M. degree. 
The following view of student life after an ab- 
sence of two years is taken from the letter to 
the Vermont Phoeniw previously quoted : 

" The burden of a letter from Cambridge must 
of course be Harvard University, which is the 
heart and nucleus of Cambridge. There is prob- 
ably not a soul in Old Cambridge which is not 
kept within its appropriate body by means of 
Harvard University. . . . 

" The stillness of all things here is stunning. 
There is no disorder on the part of the students. 
Each college building would almost shame a 
(Juaker Meeting for quietness. Certainly, I 
think a family of five is generally more noisy 
than any of these six households of fifty young 
men each. Now and then an exception breaks 
upon your delighted ear; but soon all is still 
again as the hush before a storm (which storm 
will probably come on when the next Freshman 
class comes in, with very much of the usual 
mean haze in the collegiate atmosphere)." 



48 LIFE OF JOHN H. DILLINGHAM 

At this writing John Dillingham was in the 
position of a college proctor. It gave him a room 
in one of the college halls and a stipend of |2.50 
a week in return for very 'light disciplinary 
duties. Tutoring at the rate of |1.50 per hour 
seemed available for him in sufftcient quantity 
to make a comfortable income. For several 
months his situation was most agreeable to his 
tastes, and the friendship with the Higginsons 
and through them with the Channings and other 
noted Cambridge families made an outlet for 
a social instinct that had been somewhat cul- 
tivated at Brattleboro. 

During the summer of '65 an intimation came 
to him that there was an opening at Haverford 
College. He had already put aside a solicitation 
to go to Union Springs as Principal of the board- 
ing-school there, and his first feeling in regard 
to Haverford was one of reluctance. 

The disciplinary and administrative duties 
were too much like those that had been distaste- 
ful to him at Brattleboro. He sought advice 
from his friend Albert Leeds and received a 
semi-humorous reply. This, and some assurance 
of more professorial work than was at first pro- 
posed, assisted him to make a favorable decision. 
A portion of the letter from Albert Leeds may 
be of interest: 



TEACHING APPOINTMENTS 49 

" I do not know, however, whether to advise 
you to take the position or not. If your life 
in Cambridge is a very pleasant one? If you 
find plenty of congenial company? If you will 
shortly be elected into a place like Gurney's? 
If the professors admit you into their kneipe? 
do not come. Or if being about to study law, 
you know of some place where 300 friends of 
yours, who would rush at once to you for counsel, 
are deadly enemies of each other? Or if you 
are hand and glove with the corporators of some 
railroad company about to rush into a nice law- 
suit? Or if any way you are situated more for- 
tunately than hundreds of smart young fellows 
I see sitting in their boxes of offices, labelled 
Attorney at Law, a tremendously doing of 
nothing, why don't go to Haverford.'' 

For thirteen years John Dillingham was a 
member of the Haverford staff. The death of 
President Gummere soon after he had entered 
upon his duties made some reorganization neces- 
sary. As Superintendent the burden of dis- 
cipline fell to his lot. He immediately instituted 
an honor system that worked so well that the 
Chairman of the Executive Committee of the 
Board said publicly " that it seemed to leave lit- 
tle to be desired." This success continued for 
two or three years, but for some reason it did 



50 LIFE OF JOHN H. DILLINGHAM 

not become a settled system of discipline in the 
college and finally failed entirely to meet the 
requirements of the situation. At the end of 
ten years John Dillingham was succeeded by 
others in the discipline and after three years 
as a professor accepted an appointment as Prin- 
cipal in Friends' Select School, Philadelphia. 

The thirteen years at Haverford, apart from 
college duties, were most important years in 
John Dillingham's life. His struggle for the 
realities of faith had resulted in a good meas- 
ure of conquest before he left Brattleboro. This 
is somewhat portrayed in a letter to a good 
Brattleboro friend who had sent him a copy of 
a poem entitled, " Sing while you Work." The 
letter is as follows : 

" My dear Friend : 

" ' Sing while you work.' I thank you for 
sending what I thank Mrs. Smith [the author] 

for writing. Just before me sits F L 

who seems like a song made flesh, and in him 
I read Mrs. Smith's piece perhaps before she 
ever wrote it. Such an one projecting his own 
harmony upon the world, finds all things beauti- 
ful and joyous; for in putting his hand to the 
work of the world, he instinctively strikes the 
keys which will discover the music to which he 



TEACHING APPOINTMENTS 51 

himself is set. The field is the world, every 
touching-place of which is a melodeon key, 
whereon our work if it is in the truth makes 
music along with the music of the spheres. 
^ Awake psaltery and harp,' ^ bring hither the 
timbrel,' ^ the instrument of ten strings.' I will 
sing unto the Lord in that whatsoever my hand 
finds to do I will do it with my might as unto 
the Lord, making melody in my heart because 
my work accords with the divine harmony. Did 
you know that angels' harp strings are vibrat- 
ing with the notes which our own faithful fingers 
touch while we toil here below? This is true 
Quaker music, authorized by the Psalmist, — that 
all our doings shall be the pulling of those 
strings, in the order of Divine suggestion and 
guidance, which will ring celestial chimes where 
mortal eye hath not seen nor ear heard, and 
where the joy in the presence of the Father and 
the holy angels accords with the tune our life 
for the current moment is telegraphing. 

" But how wretched is the work of that man 
who cannot sing while he works. It may be 
this will be found a test, whether our work be 
in tune above, namely, the ability to sing while 
we do the work. Of course I have been too long 
a Quaker to believe that the real signification 
of a word is its outward and material applica- 



52 LIFE OF JOHN H. DILLINGHAM 

tion, to believe for instance, ^ to sing while you 
work ' is solely a matter of Acoustics^ any more 
than that Baptism is necessarily water, or any 
matter solid or fluid is conveyance of Com- 
munion. Now I can't sing by the ^ do-re-mi ' 
process, nor whistle either but with closed lips. 
I think I do often sing while I work. If your 
soul sings, no matter whether its clothes do or 
not, — it is singing all the same. I should re- 
joice to think truly I was a Mendelssohn in that 
music, but that is far from me, whatever other 
resemblance a certain postscript may have fan- 
cied. I sent you the other day a photograph of my 
piano [Haverford College]. I drum a sorry tune 
on it, but it seems to suit the popular ear. What 
of that? Do I ring agreeable chimes above? I 
suspect not. On the contrary our only harmony, 
now so bountifully sent, is from above hither." 

Better probably than any comment one could 
write, this letter represents the spirit in which 
John Dillingham entered upon his life of ser- 
vice. The note of harmony " from above 
hither " was the note which thenceforward to 
the end of his days he designed to express in 
act and in word. Apart from the college circle, 
avenues for this expression multiplied at his 
hand. He became an active contributor to the 



TEACHING APPOINTMENTS 53 

Friends^ Review. He wrote in the main on sub- 
jects of permanent interest and displayed an 
accuracy of scholarship altogether creditable to 
his college training. Some titles may be sug- 
gestive and may prompt some reference to bound 
volumes of the Review: " The Date of the Writ- 
ing of the Gospels Traced Back," " On the Letter 
Attributed to Publius Lentulus Respecting the 
Personal Appearance of Jesus," " Importance of 
the Study of the Greek Testament." In a totally 
different class such papers as " Able and Will- 
ing," ^' The Inward Publican," " On the Testi- 
mony of Friends' Dress," give glimpses of a 
distinct development that was resulting from the 
new environment. As is well known it was a 
time of great unrest in the Society of Friends. 
The reaction in the West against what was 
called traditionalism seemed altogether iconoclas- 
tic from a conservative Philadelphia view-point. 
The religious fervor, however, that created 
the movement, made a sympathetic appeal to 
some groups of Philadelphia Friends. John 
Dillingham found himself in the midst of one of 
the most active of these groups. For three years 
after his Harvard experiences the very founda- 
tions of faith had been tested and he had finally 
felt the rock beneath his feet. Now the foun- 
dations of Quakerism for him were brought to 



54 LIFE OF JOHN H. DILLINGHAM 

the same test. He could riot be a traditional 
Quaker. He had written at Harvard in 1862: 
" I entertain great respect for the vital principles 
of the Quaker creed, but I am so observant of 
the Quaker principle of discarding religious 
formalities that I cannot conscientiously observe 
the Quaker formalities with regard to any 
peculiar demeanor, dress, or address." 

In view of such a platform his complete identi- 
fication with the type of Friend that believes 
there is a service in distinctive testimony-bear- 
ing becomes only the more interesting. He 
himself described the change by saying, " I re- 
ceived Quakerism as a conviction at Haverford 
College.'' A little of his attitude in the matter 
is disclosed in a letter written to a young Friend 
thirty-six years later. He says : " I think that 
at thy age I went through all the phases of the 
demurrer conveyed in thy letter. All young men 
who think for themselves doubtless do that. I 
can sympathize with their honest concern, and 
would not impose anything on them till the Spirit 
of Truth brings it to bear upon their vision of 
service through that method. 

" I saw it [a distinctive dress] for myself as 
a silent language of specific service to the world, 
— as a silent speaker of distinctive doctrines by 
a distinctive advertisement — while I was at 



TEACHING APPOINTMENTS 55 

Haverford, where of course surrounding feeling 
was as blind to my view as I was blind to it 
myself. I have never felt a moment's unsettle- 
ment about that surrender these 36 years since. 
But that does not make it thy call, nor another's. 
Thou recognizest for thyself a certain field of 
work in which thou regardest a testimonial ap- 
pearance as a possible obstruction. The Lord 
may want thy faithfulness in general Chris- 
tianity among men for a season before he indi- 
cates thy place in a special Christianity, to be 
an exponent of special truths which are most 
fundamental, which are the very nerve and vitals 
of general Christianity itself. When these dis- 
tinctive doctrines of Quakerism become opened 
to one as his distinct forte to uphold, for the 
better establishment of general Christianity, 
then he may be uneasy not to identify himself 
openly with the distinctiveness of his own true 
inwardness, — not to nail to the mast some suf- 
ficiently recognized flag of his select principles." 

All which did not mean, as John Dillingham 
more than once protested, that the pure Gospel 
recognizes any " religious dress other than the 
^ fine linen, clean, and white,' which is ^ the 
righteousness of saints.' " 

Portions of an article entitled, " How it is with 
an outsider," and written by him for the Wes- 



56 LIFE OF JOHN H. DILLINGHAM 

tonian, show how " he received Quakerism as a 
conviction,'^ and give some light upon the effect 
in his case of an education apart from the 
Society : 

*^ I attended the Old Scholars' Keunion at 
Westtown last summer, to find myself slightly 
in the same plight under w^hich I remember a 
boy to have suffered one day when walking with 
a half-dozen of his playmates in the woods. 
Modesty was keeping him in the rear of our pro- 
cession, and as the boys laughed out at some- 
thing, he did the same; when one of them turned 
to him, and with a contemptuous glance ex- 
claimed : ^ Humph ! you need n't laugh ! ' 

" This sense of being an outsider in all re- 
unions of Friends' schools, — for I never attended 
any Friends' school as its pupil, — though it never 
became uncomfortable, got most nearly so among 
that happy and delighted multitude at West- 
town with whom I mingled, enjoying the pro- 
ceedings almost as if I had a right in the same 
old scholarship. Yet even the remembrance of 
a nominal membership in the Committee for one 
period some time past, and the sense of universal 
welcome prevalent, could not altogether relieve 
a hanger-on from appreciating something of the 
feeling conveyed by the words : ^ You need n't 



TEACHING APPOINTMENTS 57 

laugh ! ' Yet smile I did, and could rejoice witli 
those who did so much rejoice. 

" A thirty years' connection with Friends' 
schools as teacher is still consistent with saying 
that I was never otherwise scholar in any. The 
nearest approach thereto was in having a brother 
in the Friends' Boarding School at Providence, 
or more particularly when, after managing to 
get through Harvard College, I went down to 
Newport, Rhode Island, and attended the Yearly 
Meeting. There, in 1862, was announced a gen- 
erous donation of Joseph Metcalf for scholar- 
ships in aid of needy students. Amidst ensuing 
expressions of gratitude by Friends, I was stirred 
with the presumption to raise a boy's voice in 
what was my maiden speech in a Yearly Meet- 
ing: — I hoped that this bequest was the usher- 
ing in of the time when no young Friend need 
stay away from the school by reason of poverty. 
After the meeting, most kindly notice was taken 
of the upstart by some, and especially by good 
old Samuel Austin, who said : ' If thee inclines 
to go to Providence School, I think I can assure 
thee that provision will be made.' I gratefully 
informed him that, while the kind offer would 
have been acceptable formerly, yet just having 
finished the course at Harvard College, I must 
now forego further schooling. 



58 LIFE OF JOHN H. DILLINGHAM 

'' Thus being rightfully out of all old scholars' 
associations of Friends' schools, I need not 
laugh as they laughed. And when I go up to 
the Harvard reunions I cannot laugh, so many 
of my classmates in these thirty-five years have 
passed out of sight, and I find myself at times 
in the long procession of the unknown. I feel 
most a stranger where I graduated, and least 
a stranger where I am not a son. They that 
are of the faith are the seed of Abraham, 
and the sons of his flesh may be aliens to 
his commonwealth. It is the sonship of 
principles that makes one at home here, and 
alienation of principles a stranger at his own 
cradle. 

" This brings me to the old scholarship of 
principles, in which I refuse to be a Westonian 
outsider. I received Quakerism as a conviction 
while at Haverford as a teacher. Though good 
Charles Yamall had years before written letters 
to encourage my going to a Friends' college 
instead of Harvard, yet a necessity seemed to 
direct my going to Cambridge. I have learned 
to look on this, if not as providential, yet as 
overruled for some good, in my case. I was 
likely to have let in a chronic recalcitrancy 
against all that savored of Quakerism, had I 
been in the constant outward pressure to know 



TEACHING APPOINTMENTS 59 

nothing else, before the inward life was awak- 
ened to respond to it. 

" I do not recommend a course in prodigal- 
sonship as a preparation for a home-coming to 
stay, in a filial son ship. But it has seemed 
turned to some service at times since that I then 
took in a panorama of the professing churches 
in and about Boston, and would fain have filled 
my liberal appetite with the husks of an unwait- 
ing worship and a non-waiting ministry, in all 
the rounds that I went: — till, once upon a time, 
when I saw a ' plain bonnet ' on Washington 
Street, I mentally sprang to salute it. A further 
lingering among the churches and other ways 
of thinking brought me to a preparation for a 
Friendly atmosphere once more; which, now that 
the glamor of other professions was worn off, was 
witnessed to my deepest judgment as of the Truth. 

" I do not commend an education away from 
Friends' schools, as mine was, even though for 
me it may have been (but I know not that it 
was) the shortest road for that which Friends' 
schools are for. Neither do I regard an oppor- 
tunity for a comparative view of sects and their 
principles, as necessarily dangerous to all. But 
some are not in a state for such a course ; others 
may be confirmed in their birthright by it. At 



60 LIFE OF JOHN H. DILLINGHAM 

one stage of the same person's life it would be 
dangerous; at another stage it might be settling. 
The Guide of our lives knows where best to 
place us from time to time." 

As the views of the type of Quakerism he 
embraced found expression in Friends^ Review 
and elsewhere, he was surprised to learn how 
satisfying they were to many exercised hearts. 
A quotation from a letter of Gertrude W. Cart- 
land is in keeping with much else in this line 
that might be noted: 

" My husband desires me to add that thy 
article [' On the Testimony of Friends' Dress '] 
and the * Letter of John G. Whittier ' [commend- 
ing that article], have been to him a source of 
much encouragement, and he trusts that wield- 
ing as you do ^ the pen of ready writers ' you 
will continue thus to throw your influence, as 
occasion calls, toward sustaining our Christian 
tenets, which seem of late to be assailed not 
so much from without as within our own 
household." 

The change at Haverford in the type of John 
Dillingham's Quakerism need not be pursued 
further. He never regarded it as anyway apart 
from his Christian experience, and its basis may 
be more clear in the chapter devoted to that 
subject. 



TEACHING APPOINTMENTS 61 

The event of most particular importance to 
John Dillingham in the Haverford period was 
his marriage to Mary Pim of Dowingtown, 20th 
of VII, 1871. He had a special susceptibility to 
family ties, and the happiness of his own home 
seemed to him the very richest of the favors of 
Heaven in his life. The birth of a son and four 
daughters into this home made these ties parti- 
cularly real. The son was early taken from the 
group, but the daughters grew to womanhood 
and gave their father the satisfaction of seeing 
them in homes of their own with fond grand- 
children to engage his interest and his child- 
likeness in play with them. It was always 
interesting, however, to observe how this family 
feeling seemed to include and not exclude the 
home of his youth. Till the day of her death at the 
advanced age of ninety- two he was the same de- 
voted son to his mother in Falmouth. The prac- 
tical result of this feeling made him belong in 
a very large degree to two neighborhoods and 
to two circles of Friends. 

In 1878 John Dillingham was appointed Prin- 
cipal of Friends' Select School at 820 Cherry 
Street, Philadelphia. In a measure at that time 
the school for girls and the school for boys were 
consolidated in management, although in sepa- 
rate buildings and under two Principals. Upon 



62 LIFE OF JOHN H. DILLINGHAM 

the removal of the schools to Sixteenth Street 
in 1885, the idea of consolidation had grown, 
and in 1891 a Superintendent was appointed to 
complete the work of consolidation. John Dil- 
lingham continued as senior teacher until his 
death in 1910. His special service during the 
thirty-two years of teaching in Philadelphia was 
that of quiet, personal influence upon the char- 
acters of the children who passed through the 
school. It falls to the lot of few in this world 
to have the confidence of a larger number of 
young people in matters of spiritual moment to 
them. This is dealt with more particularly in 
the chapter on John Dillingham as teacher. 



CHAPTER V 

JOHN H. DILLINGHAM AS TEACHER ^ 

'' Friendly the teacher stood like an angel of 
Light there amongst them." 

In this striking word picture from " The 
Children of the Lord's Supper/' the poet Long- 
fellow anticipated, and in a sense prophesied, 
that modern declaration of educators, that " with 
the teacher personality counts for everything." 
Any attempt, therefore, to picture a teacher's 
influence and life work must reduce itself very 
largely to the difficult task of translating per- 
sonality into words. In the final analysis all 
would recognize that such a written sketch would 
be imperfect; but, as various points of view are 
somewhat elaborated, something of the merit of 
a composite picture may be obtained. It is a 
privilege to make the attempt thus to delineate 
one so well beloved as our late friend John H. 
Dillingham. He was nearly fifty years in vari- 
ous positions in the Society of Friends as a 
teacher, and the mark of his character for good 

1 Reprinted from The Westonian, 
63 



64 LIFE OF JOHN H. DILLINGHAM 

extended not only to his pupils, but through 
them to Avidely separated circles. 

So far as school is concerned, the personality 
of a teacher has two ready avenues of expres- 
sion. One is the class-room and the recitation ; 
the other, the school at large in its various group 
activities. John H. Dillingham was particularly 
potent in the latter, which perhaps is the larger 
of these two fields. No doubt as a class teacher 
under conditions suited to his gifts, he could 
have made a brilliant mark. Some classes of 
his will long be remembered for a lively interest 
and attention of the very highest order. His 
method in this line of work might be described 
as the magnetic method. To succeed it required 
that the class should be naturally and eagerly 
interested, so that there should be the active 
discharge as of electricity between the negative 
and positive poles. One such Csesar class made a 
marked impression of his ability throughout the 
School. A member of the class, a boy of some- 
what sluggish powers, specially urged the Prin- 
cipal to visit it. There was no pause from start 
to finish in the highly electrified condition of the 
whole class. When the hour ended and this boy 
passed the Principal at the door, he exclaimed, 
" Was n't it magnificent? " 

The effect of a teacher's personality upon the 



JOHN DILLINGHAM AS TEACHER 65 

mass of a large school is a matter that might 
easily escape notice. The word spoken, and the 
act of interest and sacrifice done, get built into 
character quite unconsciously ; and, more often 
perhaps than not, no credit is given for them, 
and no gratitude felt. The true teacher hardly 
realizes this, for his reward is the scholar's de- 
velopment and success. As years passed at 
Friends' Select School, incidents, however, ac- 
cumulated that revealed John Dillingham's 
power; and now that he has gone from us there 
may be no better way to disclose this than by 
recounting some of them. As in most such cases 
the unwritten history will be the largest, and 
doubtless in many respects the most impressive. 
One morning quite early the door of the School 
office was opened by the father of one of the 
boys. He was a man of influential place in a 
great corporation. Usually some other mem- 
ber of the family would represent the boy's in- 
terest at the School, and the father's coming 
instantly created the feeling that something 
serious was wrong. He requested a private inter- 
view, so he was invited to a seat in the Superin- 
tendent's office and the door was closed. " Have 
you a teacher," he said at once, " known as 
Master John? " Upon the affirmative answer 
he proceeded to say that it had become very evi- 



66 LIFE OF JOHN H. DILLINGHAM 

dent at home that this teacher was the most 
influential factor in forming the boy's life. So 
far as they knew they had a good boy; but, in 
spite of every effort on their part, they were 
not training him to the essential habit of punc- 
tuality. Could it not be arranged, then, that 
this teacher should take up this subject at some 
suitable time after the morning Bible reading, 
or in the religious meeting? The father was 
assured that his wishes would be respected and 
that the matter would be put before the teacher. 
As the door closed upon his departure a new 
vision of John H. Dillingham's place with the 
children brought a sense of gratitude for such 
a favor. He hardly knew this boy by name and 
only met him in the public assemblies or in 
passing through the halls. And yet so great 
had been the effect upon him of John H. Dil- 
lingham's spoken words that the parents in all 
seriousness had counted upon these as sure 
succor in their extremity. 

Perhaps it was not long after this incident 
that one of the brightest and most promising 
girls in the School died quite suddenly. She 
belonged to a home to which the poet's descrip- 
tion might apply: 

" All that could charm the exquisite sense, 
And please the soul was there." 



JOHN DILLINGHAM AS TEACHEE 67 

Her life, however, had not been devoid of re- 
ligious interest. She had taken part appro- 
priate to her years in church activities, and had 
belonged to the Sunday-School. Calling a mem- 
ber of her family to her bedside when she real- 
ized that her end was near, she said that her 
chief comfort in that hour was her recollection 
of what she had heard in the " Wednesday meet- 
ing at School,'' particularly from our dear friend 
John H. Dillingham. The judgment of such a 
child at such a time sweetly reveals the hidden 
springs that nourish the spiritual life. 

Not entirely unlike this instance was another 
of a much younger child, also quite suddenly 
taken from loving parents and schoolmates by 
what seemed an untimely death. In arranging 
for her funeral her parents, although ardent 
church people, represented that the child's re- 
ligious life had been so inwrought with what 
she had heard from John H. Dillingham's lips, 
that they could not be satisfied unless they had 
him to conduct the funeral services. They were 
assured of his sympathy and interest, and told 
that he felt a drawing to attend the funeral, 
but that it would be inconsistent with his con- 
victions to have it announced that he would 
conduct a service. However, through some mis- 
understanding, at the appointed hour it was 



68 LIFE OF JOHN H. DILLINGHAM 

stated that John H. Dillingham would open the 
service with prayer. Soon it was discovered 
that he was not in the house. A delayed trolley- 
car had made him late. When finally he did 
arrive he found a customary service in course. 
At its conclusion a solemn pause opened the 
way for a message that melted the hearts of all 
in a sense of special favor. So the influence of 
a teacher on a little child made the way for 
a demonstration of a ministry not subject to 
the arrangement of man. 

Once more a funeral incident is made the occa- 
sion of exhibiting the grip which our friend had 
upon some of his scholars. A young woman, a 
graduate of the School, had found an active life 
of Christian work in one of the large evangelical 
bodies of the city, arrested by an incurable dis- 
ease. More than one of the prominent ministers 
of her denomination had her under observation 
during her illness and gave her kindly ministra- 
tion. As the end approached, however, she told 
her parents that her choice would be for a 
Friends' funeral, if her beloved teacher would 
be present. So it came to pass that after very 
brief remarks by two of the best known ministers 
in the city, one of them announced that the man- 
ner of Friends in waiting in silence would be 
observed. This silence John Dillingham broke 



JOHN DILLINGHAM AS TEACHER 69 

with testimony and prayer, and once more the 
influence of one man as a teacher came to stand 
as a testimony for the great principles that 
gathered the Society of Friends as a people. 

One naturally would like to analyze an influ- 
ence of this kind into its elements and to say 
how such a character could be made. This w^e 
recognize is quite impossible; but the dominant 
notes of such lives can often be recognized and 
noted down. In John Dillingham's case, per- 
haps, it would be readily agreed that his nature 
was first playful, then sympathetic, then spiri- 
tual. This trinity of qualities by no means ex- 
hausts the list of his characteristics; but as a 
teacher these were the winning traits and worked 
together to make him so well beloved. It may, 
therefore, be worth while to observe how these 
traits manifested themselves and what response 
they had with children. 

Jolm Dillingham's playfulness always seemed 
like the survival of the child spirit into adult 
life. It was perfectly natural, not assumed or 
acquired as an educational method. Doubtless 
many of his friends thought, and some had ob- 
served, that it seemed very akin to the childlike 
spirit commended by the Lord Jesus. Children 
recognized it at once as putting him upon their 
own platform, and so they were at home with 



70 LIFE OF JOHN H. DILLINGHAM 

him. Often as he would pass through the School 
playground he would notice some small child 
separated from the groups engaged in games, 
perhaps by shyness or oddity, and without a 
word or sign he would make a sudden oppor- 
tunity to tag such and then to run. Surprised 
out of his unnatural condition of body and mind, 
the child would pursue him; and, ever after, 
without knowing why, the playground would be 
a place of attraction to such a child and the 
School feel like home to him. In quite the same 
way our friend would slip into the indoor 
play-room of the little children and by a few 
moments' play with them would clear the atmos- 
phere of any contention about the rules of the 
game or the order in which the players should 
have part. Indeed, his last school act was thus 
to enliven a group having their recess indoors. 
Nor was the service of this quality of playful- 
ness confined to children. Kepeatedly John 
Dillingham was the instrument in companies of 
adults, arranged for relaxation, of breaking the 
ice of stiff convention and soberness of feeling 
by some very childlike act of play. One in- 
stance will doubtless suggest many to his circle 
of friends. It was the occasion of a teachers' 
picnic on the Brandywine. Members of three 
school staffs made up the company. Two at 



JOHN DILLINGHAM AS TEACHER 71 

least of the number hardly knew John Dilling- 
ham. Seeing his demure face and his broad- 
brimmed hat, one said aside to the other that 
they would have to be on their dignity. No 
sooner, however, had he entered one of the boats 
in waiting than he lifted his hat from his head 
and dropped it complacently into the water, as 
if to say to these doubtful members of the party, 
" We shall all relax together to-day." 

In the matter of sympathy John Dillingham 
was gifted in a way peculiarly his own. He 
could hardly be said to have that magnetic man- 
ner that takes all by storm. Indeed, he was 
reserved and at times with strangers apparently 
embarrassed and hesitating. With children and 
with certain classes of adults, these character- 
istics were no bar to an immediate understand- 
ing. Thus in a neighborhood of fisher folk in 
New Jersey where he was for many years much 
interested, he was accepted immediately as be- 
longing to the circle of understood friends. 
Doubtless this is explained by the simple fact 
that both these classes are attracted more by 
what is done for them, than by what is said 
to them. John Dillingham's peculiar power of 
sympathy was in no small measure due to his 
gift in discovering the special interest of a child 
and in some unexpected way ministering to it. 



72 LIFE OF JOHN H. DILLINGHAM 

For one he would save rare postage stamps; for 
another, clippings from a paper in regard to 
poultry; for still another, illustrations of the 
newest type of flying machine. It was often a 
marvel to his associates on a school-staff, not 
only that he knew a child who had no recitation 
to him, but that he also knew that child's special 
talent or predilection. 

So these two qualities of playfulness and sym- 
pathy prepared the way in John Dillingham's 
association with children for a remarkable exer- 
cise of the highest of all power, the spiritual. 
There have been few more remarkable instances 
amongst Friends of living a life wholly given 
up to Divine guidance. This principle of guid- 
ance was quite as active, and certainly as fruit- 
ful, in school, as in affairs of his meeting. His 
own phrase for it, " a quickened sense of higher 
responsibility,'' found a very special scope of 
action during the pauses of devotion following 
the School Bible reading. Times without num- 
ber children were surprised to have their special 
perplexities cleared up, or their suffering of the 
moment alleviated, by a few well-chosen words, 
that always seemed like a message from the 
inner sanctuary. Nor was that larger unit, the 
School as a whole, omitted from these exercises. 
After twenty-five years of service it was still a 



JOHN DILLINGHAM AS TEACHER 73 

surprise, to those who had observed him through 
it all, how the active life of the School gave him 
new texts, and brought home to the listeners the 
old lessons of truth, and of loyalty to duty, and 
of fidelity to principle, in a way so striking that 
they were not only effective for the moment, but 
came to have a permanent life in the best tradi- 
tions of the School. This gift of influence in 
spiritual things was not alone exercised, per- 
haps not principally exercised, in the open form 
of speaking to the School. More and more as 
the years passed John Dillingham was sought 
privately by children for spiritual counsel and 
help. Not a few found their way to his side 
with no more definite feeling than that he was 
an avenue through which blessings would de- 
scend from above. Nor were such disappointed. 
Sometimes very little might be said by our 
friend ; sometimes on bended knee he would plead 
as for his own dear child. In any case it would 
seem that heaven had descended in blessing upon 
the seeking soul. 

Perhaps there could be no more fitting epit- 
ome of John Dillingham's spiritual message to 
school children than some words spoken in 
Lausanne, Switzerland, near the time of his 
death. They formed part of an address by a 
Pastor Secretan at a distribution of prizes to 



74 LIFE OF JOHN H. DILLINGHAM 

pupils of the elementary schools. " Love your 
teachers/' he said. " Love is the fulfilling of 
the law (Eomans 13: 10). Love is also the 
secret of good study, and I think all the art 
of education is included in love. To acquire 
love, do you know what is necessary? Prayer. 
You should pray for your teachers as they pray 
for you.. Pray every day and you will discover 
how your hearts will become capable of love and 
you will also discover how your faculties will 
grow, and how your characters will acquire 
breadth and strength because you pray and live 
in communion with the Father who is in heaven." 
Nor does such a programme for a school in any 
sense minimize what modern education has de- 
veloped of motive and method for progress. 
Rather it gives the strength and serenity of life 
which best make all these things possible. How 
often and how beautifully has this inspiring ideal 
been pictured for teachers and pupils by our 
departed teacher! 

It must, then, in some sense be clear that the 
secret of John Dillingham's power was the open 
secret of the spiritual life. Like the beloved 
apostle whose name he bore, a growing benig- 
nity of countenance and of word and of act, as 
the years passed, proclaimed a fellowship with 
the spiritual verities to be in the reach of all. 



JOHN DILLINGHAM AS TEACHER 75 

" The little lieaven to go to heaven in," to which 
he frequently referred, was the atmosphere he 
made in the School he loved so well. And so 
it seemed fitting that heaven should descend 
upon him as he sat at his work there, and that 
this view of death as bringing heaven nearer, 
which he had so often proclaimed, should be the 
concluding lesson of his long devotion to the 
School. 



CHAPTEK VI 

DEVELOPMENT OF RELIGIOUS LIFE 

It was said of the pioneer Quaker George 
Fox that he " was no man's copy." In a very im- 
portant sense this must be said of every vital 
Christian. The fundamentals of faith are mat- 
ters for each individual to work out with his 
God, unless they are to be meaningless forms. 
For thirty years John Dillingham appeared in 
the circle of Philadelphia Friends as a conven- 
tional Quaker of the conservative type. The 
fact that none of the prescribed avenues for 
such training had brought him to that position 
makes his case of peculiar interest and value. 
He did not have the advantages of Friends' 
schools, his college training was in an atmos- 
phere of freedom, that had for its key-note " try 
all things," his first teaching appointment was 
under conditions quite antagonistic to the 
Quaker position and his second introduced him 
for a decade to an active but honest circle of 
Quaker reactionaries. The steps of the process 
by which he reached his final position cannot 

76 



DEVELOPMENT OF RELIGIOUS LIFE 77 

all be traced in the meagre records in hand. The 
first steps, however, are clear, and these first 
steps reveal the process that made the man. 

Those twilight talks at his mother^s knee, and 
that striking incident of his childhood when he 
felt the "work of grace" so powerfully that 
ever after he could refer to the experience for 
help, make it clear that his childhood was not 
without a recognized measure of religious life. 
As his college course progressed and the need 
of greater clearness in religious perception de- 
A^eloped, he had the experience by no means 
unusual under similar circumstances of drifting 
far from shore and of feeling very uncertain 
of his bearings. Some letters of that period 
portray this situation, his struggle with it and 
his final victory. They form a chapter of 
valuable religious history and save such notes 
as will make them a more or less connected 
narrative, they require little editorial comment. 
The first is a letter to Lydia Cartland, the wife 
of Silas Cartland of Portland, Maine. She more 
than once sounded a note of hope for John Dil- 
ingham either in her public ministry or in 
private interviews: 

" Brattleboro, Vermont, 20, vii, '64. 
" My dear Friend : 

" I can call thee nothing less, my impulse is 



78 LIFE OF JOHN H. DILLINGHAM 

to hail thee as a dear sister. Rejoice with me 
that thou hast been made a heavenly blessing to 
a spirit which without that evening's interview 
would have gone on its way the next morning 
in sadness, I think, at a feeling of unfitness for 
being loved by God or fellow-men. Too prone 
have I always been to give way to such a feeling 
in my present place of employment, and espe- 
cially was I borne very low down under the 
gloomy burden of that feeling during most of 
the preceding winter and spring, and was about 
to leave my home on the morrow in full expecta- 
tion of carrying with me the same old state of 
loneliness through another term of service here. 
But while thou wast favored to speak to me, the 
burden began to be lifted, and w^hen the Good 
Spirit sent thee again, to complete thy work with 
that which went straighter to my heart than 
words, it seemed as if the love of God came to 
me through thee and that I was not utterly un- 
lovable to his human creatures if one of them 
could so sweetly call me ' a dear brother.' 

" I left my home, and have passed the subse- 
quent time in this place under an almost con- 
stant covering of love and peace. The future 
which thou didst depict for me has been seeming 
too glorious to be attained by me. Wonders and 
unthought of experiences, miracles, let me say, 



DEVELOPMENT OF RELIGIOUS LIFE 79 

seem necessary to await me before from the 
present Slough of Despond I reach those Delect- 
able Mountains. Such attainment seems vastly 
distant. I do not see it. I thank God if thou 
didst see it for me. I feel somewhat how low 
the present still is, may I trust Him as to the 
future. Pray for me that no slip may occur on 
the way to make me fall short of the prize of 
the high calling. 

" For the past and present there seems to be 
a mystery in the providence that is shaping my 
ends. In one aspiration I was favored with suc- 
cess — that of going through a course of study. 
In the next move I had proposed — that of be- 
coming possessor of a profession, or of a fixed 
business — I seem to be set adrift with no certain 
prospects. If the interference be of God, as my 
trust declares, it means something. Again, I 
am all along pretty much cut off from contact 
with the Society of Friends. ... Is it that I 
may become absolved from traditional opinion, 
to the building up of a faith that is my own, 
which proceedeth not from Friends, but from 
the very spirit of Truth? . . . Let me confess 
my most lamentable and impoverished state, in 
that I know not where I stand. Every move- 
ment, spiritual or temporal, is a farce because 
I am unsettled, having no strong basis of estab- 



80 LIFE OF JOHN H. DILLINGHAM 

lished conviction. Yet I am straining to see what 
seems out of sight and feel a most distressing 
need of some certain strong points on which to 
stand unshaken. Oh, for the Kock of Ages! 

" I trust this state is wholly in the course of 
merciful discipline and I hope I may be spared 
to come out of it all the stronger for having 
been in it. For doubt is the discipline of faith. 
Faith which has not been submitted to trial is 
hardly yet worth the name/' 

This state of doubt and discouragement seems 
unwittingly ministered to by a challenge from 
one of his old chums. Put on the defensive 
John Dillingham seemed able to make out a 
case for the great Source of faith. We should 
hardly call it a hopeless case. 

" Brattleboro, Vt., 6, xi, '64. 
" Dear Dennett : 

" I have not time to write to you, but I do 
write because I don't want you to think I, in 
holy horror, am illiberally standing aloof from a 
correspondence in which I am to receive such 
Christless replies as you, in the sincerity, I doubt 
not, of your present state of mind, proffer for 
guidance to a darkened soul, as mine. 

" As hunger corresponds to food and implies 



DEVELOPMENT OF RELIGIOUS LIFE 81 

its existence, so my craving for some definite 
Way, Truth, and Life in which to live, move, 
and have my being, implies that there is a sup- 
ply. What is it, and where is it? You deny 
me Christ and what is left? Either a lapsing 
into indifference, Don't Care, and license of 
body and soul, or a recourse to one of the other 
systems of faith, a system which will have to 
be superior to Christianity. I have not exam- 
ined Confucius or Mohammed or Zoroaster or 
Joseph Smith or Spiritism or myself sufficiently 
to judge adequately of their merits as rocks of 
ages on which to stand secure from the black 
and blue billows of my own doubt. Do you 
recommend these or any other in preference to 
Christ? No, you do not. For you say also, 
^ Progress to any one sincerely believing any 
creed that I have heard of is an impossibility.' 
Well, neither am I concerned to believe in any 
creed. It is not Creedism to which I give my 
thought, but Christianity, which seems to me 
quite distinct from Creedism and probably op- 
posed to it. You think men's preaching has 
biased me. So it has doubtless. Therefore I 
give up what any man may say or write, and 
look to the Gospels themselves as the fount from 
which all other Christian writings are drawn. 
I look to the Gospels (in the original), to see 



82 LIFE OF JOHN H. DILLINGHAM 

what they will tell me, and to find whether they 
will impress me with the same convictions others 
have derived from them and about them. To 
me, reading those Scriptures iDith a candid 
mind, they will come home as the words of 
eternal life, if such they he. Otherwise I must 
look for the words of eternal life elsewhere, for 
somewhere they are, and available, else God 
hoaxes mankind when in the universal appetite 
for a revelation, He reveals that a revelation 
there is. 

" You make an insinuation or two about 
Jesus Christ. These I leave. To apologize for 
Him would be a blasphemy or two. Some pro- 
fessing Him, I fear, magnanimously take Him 
under their patronage to defend Him. I should 
think my faith in Him would be infinitesimal, 
Avere it not too great for that. 

" He is that He is. 

" You say He undoubtedly taught a truth or 
two. I don't know what truth He taught, un- 
less all He said was truth. If I am to winnow 
any chaff from the wheat of the Gospels, I am 
as bad off as before, not knowing among things 
supernatural what is truth and what not. I 
think Jesus Christ might as well have taught 
no truth at all if He was a liar in announcing: 
* He that believeth in me, though he were dead. 



DEVELOPMENT OF RELIGIOUS LIFE 83 

yet shall lie live; and whosoeyer liveth and be- 
lieveth in me shall never die.' If that declara- 
tion is one of the one or two truths you say he 
taught, then all He taught was truth, otherwise 
there is as yet no credible gospel of eternal life 
revealed to man, and it is a matter of indif- 
ference how I let myself slide. One thing will 
be as good perhaps as another. But I have 
written enough of this, not having qualification 
to say a word of it perhaps.'' 

Four months later from the same source John 
Dillingham hears of a report that he was look- 
ing favorably to joining the Roman Catholic 
Church. His answer is a further chapter (or 
continuance of the former one), in the develop- 
ment of his religious life. 

" Brattleboro, Vt., 27 March, '65. 
" Dear Dennett : 

" As you suppose, McCarthy went too far in 
supposing that I was looking favorably toward 
the Catholic as my future churcli. I am, I hope, 
putting myself in a position of candor towards 
all forms of religious faith while looking about 
for that church which shall come home to my 
conviction as the true one. I have been hoping 
and still hope by going to Cambridge (or else- 



84 LIFE OF JOHN H. DILLINGHAM 

where) to have better opportunity of satisfying 
my religious wants, than I can have here. My 
own efforts can aim only at acquiring intellec- 
tual satisfaction; spiritual satisfaction must 
come from a spiritual source: and I am per- 
suaded it will come, in so far as I act upon 
my intellectual convictions. Chiefly, I want to 
satisfy myself of the Authority of the New 
Testament. Of course till that is done, I can- 
not decide upon Catholicism or any mode of 
Christian faith. . . . 

" Do you construct air castles any longer? 
Do you expect to work through life as through 
a piece of drudgery, or does life still retain 
much of poetry for you looking forward into 
it? That you are in for a profession shows that 
hope has not left you. Cherish hope. It is the 
only food of happiness; it is the poetry of life; 
it is the daylight of the soul ; it is the good color- 
ing of all things ; it is the strength of the strong ; 
it is the life of the living. 

" Excuse all my letters. When I come to life 
I hope to write you a good one. For these few 
years past I have been a somnambulist. There 
have been several pleasant dreamings and sev- 
eral nightmares. But where were the realities? 
Where is Truth? I shall answer this question 
sometime. May it not be altogether a post- 



DEVELOPMENT OF EELIGIOUS LIFE 85 

mortem answer. If life be hid with Christ in 
God, welcome then, oh, Christ! (Wouldn't 
some mediatory channel between us and the 
great absolute, be a convenience?) " 

iVnother friend of this period debated these 
difficulties of faith with John Dillingham, ap- 
parently in a yery different spirit. Albert R. 
Leeds had come to Harvard during 1861. A 
friendship had promptly grown up between the 
two, and there is note that they were much 
together, oftenest in attending meetings at 
Lynn, and in visits to Lynn Friends. At Brattle- 
boro, when John Dillingham entered fairly into 
conflict with doubts, he turned naturally, there- 
fore, to Albert Leeds with the confidences for 
which their friendship had prepared him. The 
first letter of that correspondence is not at hand, 
but its concluding sentence is quoted in the first 
letter from Albert Leeds in reply to it, as follows : 

" If Christ be that firm basis, on Him as the 
Rock of Ages, may I stand right speedily, and 
be a man and have life, and be strong and never 
die.-' This sentence defines very clearly the 
quest which at that time engaged the utmost 
energy of soul of these two earnest young men. 
Albert Leeds applied the test of Scripture to 
it and sent in reply numerous Scripture refer- 



86 LIFE OF JOHN H. DILLINGHAM 

ences which John Dillingham wrote out in his 
exercise-book in the form in which they are here- 
with printed. This Scripture-searching in both 
cases had a deeply affecting interruption in 
which the young men found the " Eock of Ages " 
in a heart experience that enabled them to rise 
above what otherwise would have been over- 
whelming grief. Albert Leeds's father died sud- 
denly in Philadelphia, in Ninth Mo., 1864, and 
John Dillingham's brother quite as suddenly in 
Falmouth during the previous autumn. 

The one available letter of John Dillingham's 
in this correspondence is as follows: 

" Brattleboro, 18-24 Oct., '64. 
To A. K. Leeds: 

" In a natural state what should I write that 
would not be dubious and valueless? How shall 
I find the truth? is still my question. Where 
I shall find it I am told by a cloud of witnesses. 
The testimony in which I prefer to rest my con- 
fidence says, ^ In Christ and him crucified.' That 
is ivhere. But how? No Christ comes before 
my spiritual vision; my imagination fails to 
construct or depict one. I grasp at the mist. 
Shall I surrender myself to the unspeakable 
nothing which I seem to see and call it Christ? 
or will He in my heart be born of the Spirit, 



DEVELOPMENT OF RELIGIOUS LIFE 87 

so that I can see Him as something and not 
as a holy blank, — [rather] as a divine and sav- 
ing reality to whom I am called upon to yield 
myself unto salvation? This straining after 
faith I find to be unsuccessful. It seems that 
faith cannot be of ourselves: it is the gift of 
God. Shall I lie supinely then and wait for it? 
How the questions come up, don't they? to make 
the truth contradict itself. I know not what is 
to be done, then, but to say, ' I must give up,' 
and here may be a man's spiritual crisis. When 
he is brought by his perplexity and discourage- 
ment to say ^ I must give up ' everything depends 
on w^hether he gives up to unconcern and in- 
difference (which is death) or to God in help- 
lessness. ' Submit yourselves, therefore, to God.' 
The future sceptic and the future Christian 
travel a common road till they come to where 
they say ^ I give it up ' ! Here the paths di- 
verge. You thenceforth become one thing or 
another according to whether you submit your- 
self to God or to Don't Care, — to Life or to 
Death. 

" You say truly that no one can teach another, 
but it must be God who teaches each one. I 
have looked after light in able works, excellent 
commentaries, most cherished religious books, 
but very trivial satisfaction comes from book- 



88 LIFE OF JOHN H. DILLINGHAM 

searching. It seems best to limit one's self to 
Scripture-searching, and in the Scriptures I have 
set out to confine myself to the Gospels in the 
original and to peruse them by the light of no 
man's annotations or explanations, but only by 
such light in my inner self as may be given 
me. For I want nothing from other minds to 
bias me, but I want to read them as if I alone of 
all the earth was having the first reading of them. 
Will not the spirit, as I thus proceed, set the 
Scriptures in their true light before me and by 
them make me wise unto salvation? When that 
shall have been done, I may with impunity read 
the best of the other books to confirm me wherein 
they are able to confirm and not to shake me 
where they are too human, because I shall have 
that ''Aytov nveu^JLa which fans the chaff from 
the wheat. 

" I have long been looking forward to obtain- 
ing an intellectual conviction of the authenticity 
of the Scriptures before I should rest my spiri- 
tual faith in them. I have been waiting for a 
chance to investigate — historically and other- 
wise. But it seems that a message of salvation 
given to each and every person in the world is 
to be accepted on better grounds of faith than 
historical evidences. For who in 1000 has 
the time, means, or ability to thread them each 



DEVELOPMENT OF EELIGIOUS LIFE 89 

for himself? It cannot be that each must go 
back 2000 years to prove the truth, but if saving 
truth it be, it must be saving truth now and 
here to each man. There must be something 
intrinsic in the revelation itself to make it come 
home to the soul as the very breath of life more 
accessibly and effectually than by the round- 
about way of critical research. No matter what 
are the mundane circumstances of its origin, 
time, or place, does what I am reading come 
home to my inmost conviction as the very truth? 
If it does it is revelation enough. I know 
nothing about Peter, James, or Matthew, but 
this little sentence here is true and so divine, 
and lo! here is a cluster of wonderful spiritual 
facts and in short the book is crowded with 
them. I have never seen anything like it. There 
are systems of belief which profess to set forth 
the Way, the Truth, and the Life to men but 
this book sets forth the sublimest, the purest, 
and the best. If God has provided mankind 
with any general revelation, the Gospel must 
comprise that revelation. ... If I cannot be- 
take myself to the words of Jesus, I despair of 
a revelation. 

" Let me proceed to consider then and make 
always new discoveries in them that they are 
the words of eternal life. If as I read them I 



90 LIFE OF JOHN H. DILLINGHAM 

do not become more certain of them as convey- 
ing revelations from on high, surely all other 
sorts of evidence will be useless to me. If the 
road runs by my door, why should I go to the 
beginning of the road to enter it? 

" Such are some of the thoughts that rather 
appease some of my difficulties. I cannot tell 
you how much of what I have written I think 
to be so and how much I suppose it best to 
think. I do not know. Nevertheless some- 
thing in it may be of use to you, as much in 
a free exposition of your state would be to me. 
Which disclosure I hope to receive from you, 
knowing that in writing out the same you will 
be better taught and confirmed in the truth than 
you would by anybody's instructions : even as I 
in the present writing have become instructed. 
I am eager to read and in a few weeks, perhaps, 
to hear of the many things you have to say. I 
wish I had something to say, too, that when I 
see you, there might be a fair interchange. But 
I fear you can expect nothing from me. But I 
wish that both you and thousands smitten under 
sin might see, sure, safe, and certain cause to 
expect much and very much from me, auctore 
Deo." 



John Dillingham makes note of the letter to 



DEVELOPMENT OF RELIGIOUS LIFE 91 

wliich the above is a reply in writing to his 
mother as follows : " His letter is very valuable 
to me in the evidence he gives of having been 
long a seeker after the Truth. He laid hold of 
some religious aspirations I expressed in my 
last letter to him to confirm and encourage them 
by noting at least one hundred and twelve 
Scripture references in his letter to me, by 
which I hope to derive infinite profit as I look 
them out.'' He not only did look them out, but 
wrote them out carefully. The exercise is 
printed as a part of this history. It shows how 
influential Scripture was in establishing John 
Dillingham's faith. 

^^ If Christ he that firm hasis, on him as the 
Rock of Ages may I stand right speedily^ and 
he a marly and he strong^ and never die/^ 

" // Christ he that firm hasis/^ 

" For other foundation can no man lay than 
that is laid which is Jesus Christ." 1 Cor. 3 : 11. 

" Behold I lay in Zion for a foundation a 
stone, a tried stone, a precious corner-stone, a 
sure foundation." Is. 28 : 16. 

" Built upon the foundation of the apostles 
and prophets, Jesus Christ himself being the 
chief corner-stone; in whom all the building 
fitly framed together groweth into an holy 



92 LIFE OF JOHN H. DILLINGHAM 

temple in the Lord : in whom ye also are builded 
together for an habitation of God through the 
Spirit. Eph. 2 : 20-22. 

^^ On Him as the Rock of Ages J' 

See Ps. 18 : 1, 2, 31, and 78 : 35. 

" And that Kock was Christ." 1 Cor. 10 : 4. 

" He only is my Kock and my salvation ; he 
is my defense; I shall not be greatly moved." 

Ps. 62 : 2. 

" And a man shall be as a hiding-place from 
the wind, and a covert from the tempest; as 
rivers of water in a dry place, as the shadow 
of a great rock in a weary land." Is. 32 : 2. 

^^ May I stand right speedily/' 

" Behold, now is the accepted time ; behold, 
now is the day of salvation." 2 Cor. 6 : 2. 

^^ And he a manJ' 

" Put on the new man, which is renewed in 
knowledge after the image of him that created 
him." Col. 3 : 10 ; Eph. 4 : 23, 24. 

" Till we all come in the unity of the faith, 
and of the knowledge of the Son of God, unto a 
perfect man, unto the measure of the stature of 
the fulness of Christ." Eph. 4 : 13. 

^^ And have life.'' 

" My sheep hear my voice, and I know them 
and they follow me; and I give unto them 
eternal life; and they shall never perish, 



DEVELOPMENT OF RELIGIOUS LIFE 93 

neither shall any man pluck them out of my 
hand." ' John 10 : 27, 28. 

" I am the resurrection and the life : he that 
believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall 
he live; and whosoever liveth and believeth in 
me, shall never die." John 11 : 25, 26. 

" Thou hast given him power over all flesh, 
that he should give eternal life to as many as 
thou hast given him. And this is life eternal, 
that they might know thee, the only true God, 
and Jesus Christ whom thou hast sent." 

John 17 : 2, 3. 

" For the wages of sin is death ; but the gift 
of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our 
Lord." Eom. 6:23;5:2L 

" If that which ye have heard from the be- 
ginning shall remain in you, ye also shall con- 
tinue in the Son, and in the Father. And this 
is the promise that he hath promised us, even 
eternal life." 1 John 2 : 24, 25. 

" And this is the record, that God has given 
to us eternal life, and this life is in his Son. 
He that hath the Son hath life; and he that 
hath not the Son of God hath not life." 

1 John 5 : 11, 12. 

" And we know that the Son of God is come, 
and hath given us an understanding, that we 
may know him that is true, and we are in him 



94 LIFE OF JOHN H. DILLINGHAM 

that is true, even in his Son Jesus Christ. This 
is the true God, and eternal life." 

John 5 : 20. See also 1 John 1 : 1-3. 

^^ And he strong J' 

" I have written unto you, young men, be- 
cause ye are strong, and the word of God 
abideth in you, and ye have overcome the wicked 
one." 1 John 2 : 14. 

u Therefore I take pleasure in infirmities, in 
reproaches, in necessities, in persecutions, in 
distresses for Christ's sake : for when I am weak 
then am I strong." 2 Cor. 12 : 10. 

" Watch ye, stand fast in the faith, quit you 
like men, be strong." 1 Cor. 16 : 13. 

" They that wait upon the Lord shall renew 
their strength." Is. 40 : 31 ; Ps. 27 : 14. 

" In the Lord have I righteousness and 
strength." Is. 45 : 24. 

" Finally, my brethren, be strong in the Lord, 
and in the power of his might." 

Eph. 6 : 10, etc. 

" The Lord will give strength unto his people." 

Ps. 29 : 11. 

" The Lord is the strength of my life ; of whom 
shall T be afraid? " "^ Ps. 27 : 1. 

" Blessed is the man whose strength is in 
thee." — " They go from strength to strength." 

Ps. 84 : 5 and 7. 



DEVELOPMENT OF RELIGIOUS LIFE 95 

^^ And never die J' 

" Whosoever liveth and belieyeth in me, shall 
never die." John 11 : 26. 

" Be thou partaker of the afflictions of the 
gospel according to the power of God ; who hath 
saved us, and called iis with an holy calling, not 
according to our works, but according to his 
own purpose and grace, which was given us in 
< 'hrist Jesus before the world began ; but is now 
made manifest by the appearing of oui* Savioui' 
Jesus Christ, who hath abolished death, and 
hath brought life and immortality to light 
through the gospel.'^ 2 Tim. 1 : 8-10. 

This fragmentary correspondence with two 
friends, one impeaching the faith in which John 
Dillingham was struggling to become settled, 
the other candidly appealing for help with real 
difficulties, put him in a sense upon his mettle 
and, as he confesses, was good for him. It 
shows something of the process by which the 
strong evangelical note of the authority of Holy 
Scripture became blended with a dominating- 
sense of the authority of the Spirit. During 
the thirty years of his public ministry these 
notes were always struck in harmony. 

A few entries are included in the Harvard ex- 
ercise-book from which these letters are copied, 



96 LIFE OF JOHN H. DILLINGHAM 

that serve as further way-marks in this religious 
history. Under date of 18 of xi, '63 : 

" I feel more sensibly how religion is a thing 
to be aspired for. I do not view it as implying 
dejection of spirit, or disquietude of soul, or 
self-distrust, or any low abasedness and self- 
accusation. Those who try to harness on any 
such disposition before they can fancy them- 
selves as properly and comfortably religious, 
had better be satisfied to remain outside of that 
[supposed religious] state, for thereby they re- 
main outside of a state of spiritual affectation. 
Nay, rather, religion is something splendid and 
entertaining. It implies whatever is best and 
happiest. It implies manly self-respect, which is 
only another name for confidence in the ever- 
present Helper. It implies a hearty relish and 
appreciation of whatsoever is Good, True, and 
Beautiful ; for such things are the things of God. 
Let us cleave to those things as being the nearest 
representations of Him we have on earth. As 
the mind is on God who outweighs the most wor- 
shipful men and women, so we are self-possessed 
as being above them because we are in Him. 

" 8 of XI, '63." 

" I can now understand more vividly than 
before, how Christians feel with regard to Jesus 



DEVELOPMENT OF RELIGIOUS LIFE 97 

by my feelings with regard to our departed 
Moses. Am T in any suffering? Moses suf- 
fered; and it is a joy to suffer in sympathy with 
him. His sufferings have power to strengthen 
me in all that I can undergo. Is labor and 
activity irksome to me? What were the labors 
and exercises of my brother on his eventful bed ! 
Surely all the effort I may make in my earthly 
mission cannot exceed the strain and work 
through which he was led so victoriously. If 
Moses is such an exemplar to me, I can under- 
stand how the life, sufferings, and death of our 
great friend and brother Jesus Christ may well 
affect the Christian believer. 

" Does it not seem also that some of our 
affections have gone to Heaven with Moses? that 
our love of him has been turned into a love of 
Heaven inasmuch as he is heavenly? " 

Without date, the following evidently belong 
to this period: 

" God Manifest in the Flesh. 

" Our idea of God is derived from our know- 
ledge of the only other intelligent persons we 
know of. We ascribe to Him the attributes of man. 
The ancient Jews, the Greeks and Romans formed 
their notion of Deity in this way, and we see 



98 LIFE OF JOHN H. DILLINGHAM 

what sort of character they invested God with. 
They viewed Him as having many of the imperfec- 
tions and bad passions of man. Why should they 
think otherwise? They had never known of a 
perfect person who might stand to their minds 
as a representative of God. Now Jesus Christ 
has been presented by the Father to the con- 
templation of the world, that we might form 
juster conceptions of the Deity, viewing Him 
through Jesus, His perfect human representative, 
— ' God manifest in the flesh,' ' in whom the 
Father is revealed,' ' He that hath seen me hath 
seen the Father also.' " 

Again, " It is the peculiarity and beauty of 
the Christian faith that God is represented 
by it as Our Father, The religious educa- 
tion of the child is not so exclusively depend- 
ent on his mother's instructions, as it is too 
commonly thought, because the father is 
solemnly responsible for the kind of idea the 
child acquires of the word father. If the per- 
son whom the child looks upon as his father is 
selfish, tyrannical, cruel, or base, then the child 
associates with the name father ideas of selfish- 
ness, cruelty, or baseness. What a low, if not 
blasphemous opinion the child must then obtain 
of our Father in Heaven ! — having so many dis- 



DEVELOPMENT OF RELIGIOUS LIFE 99 

agreeable impressions of that which bears the 
name of father. When I consider that to the 
child's mind the earthly father stands in some 
measure as ' God manifest in the flesh,' I cannot 
exonerate liim from a responsibility at least 
equal to that of the mother." 

Again, " I do not conceive that God needed 
to be wrought upon by Christ's mission in order 
to save us, but that man needed to be wrought 
upon by it in order that he might be saved. 
Christ was for man and not for God. He was 
a news-bringer of salvation and a Guide to it 
suited to the ^ constitution of man,' to the organ- 
ization of things, and to the historical develop- 
ment of the human race. He was and is a 
necessity for man. ' God so loved the world ' as 
to save it and to put man in the way of a 
glorious future. Would man have knowTi this 
had not God revealed it to him? And what 
an effectual mode of revelation it was! pre- 
senting authority and wonderfulness through 
miracles, example through a Perfect Life, in- 
struction through words such as never man spoke 
and bearing the stamp and seal of Divinity in 
everything. Supplying [also] in the person of 
his Son a link between Humanity and Divinity, 
a passageway between us and the Father such 



100 LIFE OF JOHN H. DILLINGHAM 

as the constitution of human nature requires. 
Yea, Christ is for us. His great message of 
the Father's ever-cherished Love is for us. His 
disclosure of somewhat of Divine Truth is for 
us. His deeds are for us. His Life is for us. 
His death is for us. Christ is the Voice of God 
— the Word. The Father's love might have ex- 
isted without His telling us of it. But it makes 
all the difference in the world to us, whether 
we know it or not. God be thanked, then, for 
the glorious revelation of it through his Son. 
Who are we and what do we know, that we 
should criticise the way in which the revelation 
came to us, unmindful of the devoutest gratitude 
that it came at all? 

" Let the conditions of salvation be what they 
will, I have naught to say against them. God 
knows what conditions are best for us. Suppose 
he had promised us the highest joys of His King- 
dom unconditionally. Surely that would be giv- 
ing us license to abandon ourselves to any and 
every form of vice and evil. That would be tell- 
ing us that the downward road and upward road 
were without distinction the way to the purest 
happiness. No! Our Father makes no such 
contradictions. He has shown us in the life of 
Christ the true path that leads to glory. 
' Whither I go ye know and the way ye know.' 



DEVELOPMENT OF RELIGIOUS LIFE 101 

The footsteps of Christ are to be followed by 
IIS, they were made for us. Let us tread in 
them ever onward, walk as He w^alked, love as 
He loved, worship as He worshipped, live, move, 
and have our being as He lived, moved, and had 
His being, even in the Father, and so be for- 
ever the blessed children of God with Him our 
Elder Brother." 

One other source is available to show the de- 
velopment of John Dillingham's religious life. 
Something like two hundred home letters are 
extant. These are mostly written to his mother 
and they show how intimately confidential were 
the relationships between the two. After the 
death of his brother Moses and the memorable 
interview with Lydia Cartland pictured in the 
letter quoted at the beginning of this chapter, 
touching allusions to the religious life abound. 
The selections made for this narration include 
those that seem best to indicate his progress 
toward the stature of a full-grown man in 
Christ. 

" Brattleboro, Vt., 16, xi, '63. 
" I confess I have thought daily, not too much 
of the opinion of my colleagues but too little, 
of my God. That is I have thought of them and 



102 LIFE OF JOHN H. DILLINGHAM 

their opinion to the exclusion of what should 
be uppermost in all my thoughts. But to-day 
I feel something of a victory in that respect, 
and a Christian self-respect. I really see how 
it was that grandfather Hoag forgot his con- 
stitutional bashfulness when his mind became 
full of the higher concerns of his religion. 

"So we are as good as anybody so long as 
God our strength is better. We are never weak 
while our God is strong. For in Him we live 
and move and have our being. He is our life. 
So while we live in Him, we shall never die. 
To-day I have succeeded, as far as the will 
went, in living as unto Him, more uninter- 
ruptedly; it seems to me, than at any former 
day. The secret of religion is, I think, to carry 
God into our work and to work as unto Him. 
Work is worship, and going to meeting is only 
to fit us for this real practical worship." 

" Brattleboro, 4, II, '64. 
" I seem to see it as a truth that we act in 
error to strain and distress ourselves about our 
condition, neglecting to look above it; but that 
we should leave dwelling on our bad state and 
trust in God in peace and not in worriment. 
He Avill take care of our condition for us if we 
leave it to Him. Take it for granted in love to 



DEVELOPMENT OF RELIGIOUS LIFE 103 

Him that all is well, and as thy faith is so be 
it unto thee. Christ has made God our Father 
and not an austere retributive Judge. Leave 
fearful ideas of Jehovah to Old Testament 
Jews and accept the love of a benignant Father 
among gospel Christians who here and hereafter 
rest in Him." 

" Brattleboro, 9, VII, '64. 
" I pray that thou mayest have divine com- 
panionship at any rate and so not be lonesome, 
and that the covering of love which was started 
in me through Lydia Cartland may not wear off 
but increase and multiply under the Infinite 
Love in Christ Jesus. And still more so than 
in me, may it abound in thee." 

" Brattleboro, 10, vii, '64. 
" I have not felt at all inclined to go to the 
parlor wishing to be all the time by myself and 
to enjoy the comfort of my own feelings, such 
as I brought away with me from home and the 
Quarterly Meeting. I do not wish to disturb the 
impression constantly abiding with me, which 
Lydia Cartland left in my feelings, if it was 
Lydia Cartland and not an angel. She did me 
good. ... If thou canst find out, tell me where 
she is going to be this summer." 



104 LIFE OF JOHN H. DILLINGHAM 

" Brattleboro, 15, VII, '64. 
" If thy happiness is to keep pace with mine, 
thou hast occasion to feel very happy now, for 
I have been enjoying almost every minute since 
my return. It seems to me remarkable that 
others seem to see for me more clearly than 
I do for myself about my calling of the Lord. 
I hope I shall be led as clearly as they say they 
are about my mission when the right time comes. 
Lydia Cartland charged me not to depend upon 
seeing so very clearly at once but to be faithful 
from the first and the Lord would make it all 
right. I hope she saw it to be so." 

" Brattleboro, 17, vii, '64. 
" It seems something of a paradise here now. 
If God is in the garden with me, surely it is one, 
so that unf alien Adam might envy.'' 

" Haverford College, 2, ix, '65. 
" I wish I could know very minutely and 
particularly how thou art feeling from moment 
to moment. Dost thou not iBnd it rather up-hill 
work to feel like resigning me into the Lord's 
keeping? Resign or not, I have to be in His 
keeping all the same and it will work more 
smoothly under resignation than in spite of it. 
I fancy the Lord can have His way with us better 



DEVELOPMENT OP^ RELIGIOUS LIFE 105 

for twenty weeks as we are now situated. . . . 
Our bodies being near do not make company 
for each other, it is only nearness of spirit, and 
our spirits can never dwell more truly near to 
each other than when they abide in the same 
Holy Spirit. Let that be our Comforter. And 
if thou art anxious about me, remember that 
no principalities or powers can do worse to me 
than the Lord sees fit to allow, and to convert 
into blessing. On the whole things are safest in 
His hands and our worriment can do nothing 
better than to lead us to pray.'' 

" Haverford College, 9, ix, '65. 

" While I was unpacking to see so much that 
thou hadst had a hand in, was affecting to me, 
and made me glance forward to the time when 
thou who hast done so much for me, shouldst 
be gratified by seeing me again. And I wished 
that thy labors for me might amount to a rich 
return for thee in my well-doing here so that 
thou mightst enjoy far more satisfaction through 
my being here than if I had remained with thee. 

" I went out last night and in my strolling 
about visited the orchard where I remembered 
having prayed when I was here before. There 
I had a good time last evening in prayer and 
was helped abundantly for thee and for father 



106 LIFE OF JOHN H. DILLINGHAM 

and for myself, and then I was led on behalf 
of many I feel an interest in ; Lydia Ann, Lydia 
M., Lot Fish and Cloe, Aunt Charity, Daniel 
Swift, Lydia Hoxie, Capt. Tobey, Minister 
Carter, Mercy and Kuth, Uncle Edward, and 
Lois Gifford." 

" 20, 9, '65. 
" I took a little walk to-night, and though the 
country was rather different from that at home, 
I looked up and saw the same stars and heavens 
and felt at home while looking at them. It 
teaches us a lesson. Look aloft and we shall 
feel at home. Wherever we go we have with us 
the same heaven, the same Lord, 

* Then why should one thought of anxiety seize us 
Though distance divide us from those whom we 

love ; 
They rest in the covenant mercy of Jesus, 
Their prayers meet with ours in the mansions 
above.' 

... I have had nothing to do in the meetings 
but keep still. A further qualification of heart 
seems necessary in me for this place which is 
peculiar, — not at all like other places in the 
composition of its meetings for worship." 



DEVELOPMENT OF RELIGIOUS LIFE 107 

" Haverford College, 9, x, '65. 
*^ Since I wrote last, I have been led to gain 
in the secret of my heart more solid religious 
satisfaction than I have yet known. I have 
been led to resolve upon Christ as my Way, 
Truth, and Life. Now I know^ better where I 
stand, and feel a greater clearness and repose 
than I have yet knowm. I do not say that Christ 
has accepted me, only I have resolved to receive 
Him in the submission of him who said, ' Lord, 
T will follow thee whithersoever thou goest.' " 

" Haverford College, 3, xii, '65. 

'' Something in the ordering of Supreme Wis- 
dom has directed for these many years that the 
members of our family should be kept separate 
from each other. There is doubtless a purpose 
in it all, but it sometimes has a strange appear- 
ance to me, that those whose lives are the most 
intimately connected with each other should so 
much be deprived of each other's society, and 
that each should be alone in the world, — alone 
with God, let us have it. 

" I have felt for thee very much, that thou 
hast had to resign two portions, as it were, of 
thy very self, the one to heaven, and the other 
to the wide world. Surely will not the Lord 
accept thy sacrifice? which perhaps will not 



108 LIFE OF JOHN H. DILLINGHAM 

prove to be a sacrifice in the sense of final loss, 
for will not thy own be restored to thee, as 
Isaac was to Abraham, through the Lamb offered 
once for all? Let patience have her perfect 
work." 

" Haverford College, 24, xii, '65. 
" My first trouble is, then, that on account 
of restraint and sensitiveness I fear I hold my- 
self in reserve from the students against my 
will. The second apprehension is, that I do not 
satisfy myself in making my recitations suf- 
ficiently interesting, partly because I do not feel 
at ease before the class. Now this is pretty talk 
for one who set out with the resolve that ^ one 
is his master even Christ ' ; that he was not to 
regard man ^ whose breath is in his nostrils ' ; 
that according to the word spoken by Daniel 
Swift, I was to have trials here, but must make 
the Lord my refuge and I would come out vic- 
torious. But this indeed is the root of the whole 
matter, and my sense of this spiritual failure 
contaminates the enjoyment of other things. 
Thou knowest how I insisted upon it at the first 
that if I failed with the Lord I should fail with 
men. But I have no evidence that I have failed 
with either. I only have my little discourage- 
ments as all others have theirs. I write it all 
out as bad as it is to relieve thy anxiety." 




LYDIA BEEDE DILLINGHAM 



1814-1905 



DEVELOPMENT OF RELIGIOUS LIFE 109 

" Haverford College, 26, iv, '66. 
" Are any things promised in the Gospel which 
thou desirest? Well, they are promised to thee, 
if thou wilt take them home to thyself as sure 
and certain. Then looking forward to thy glori- 
ous prospect, be happy in the present, knowing 
that it is impossible for anything ever to sepa- 
rate thee from the love of God in Christ Jesus." 

" Haverford College, 12, ix, '66. 
" I have not had time to unpack until the 
latter part of this Fourth-day afternoon. I have 
got through with it quite comfortably though 
unpacking a trunk is usually the most homesick 
work I can do, the trunk is always so full of 
mother, — every fold of a shirt, and each of a 
vast multitude of stitches, indeed every article 
as it lies there just as it was packed at home has 
some association with thee. But our omnipotent 
Father has also association with thee each sev- 
eral moment, and at the same time I have 
access to Him, and we cannot thus be apart, 
let us say, in time nor in eternity.'' 

"Haverford, Pa., 30, ix, '66. 
" I meant to have written out Moses Bede's 
unanswerable argument concerning ^ the more 
sure word of prophecy,' but have not time now. 



110 LIFE OF JOHN H. DILLINGHAM 

Suffice to say that the whole meaning turns on 
the translation, which, as it stands, is correct 
but liable to mislead. For what is translated 
' the more sure word of prophecy ' is in the 
words Peter wrote 'tov psgatoxspov Xoyov' ' the word 
more confirmed,' i e., we have the word of 
prophecy better confirmed. The word of proph- 
ecy was good, and the vision on the mount 
confirmed it, made it ' more sure.' Hold fast 
to the light till more light comes, and it is all 
clear as day." 

" Haverford College, 19, ii, '67. 
To His Parents 

" In entering upon another term my mind was 
much drawn to you at home, and the impression 
came to me that the good Master was the proper 
one to take care of you and I should leave it 
all to Him. For He loves you more than I pos- 
sibly can and will do the best that can be done 
for you, and I should give you up to Him, for 
' he that loveth father or mother more than me 
is not worthy of me.' I have confidence that 
you will be blessed the more if I resign the care 
of you to Him. In my sort of homesickness 
there has always been a good deal of lack of 
trust and faith. May we not lack in it now 
with reference to each other and may we each 



DEVELOPMENT OF RELIGIOUS LIFE 111 

find the other the better for it. We can't help 
anything by worrying, but our Savior can help 
everything by our trusting." 

" W. Haverford, Pa., 12, viii, '67. 
" Last Fifth-day I thought we should have a 
silent meeting. But after we were seated some 
time a carriage came up, and soon Mary Whitall, 
John M. Whitall's wife, came in. . I thought 
she must have come with some minister, and 
presently in came Samuel Bettle. xlt length he 
introduced his sermon with the words, ' The 
redemption of the Soul is precious.' He spoke a 
long time and a more weighty, impressive, and 
eloquent appeal I think I never heard. In like 
manner also he appeared in supplication. They 
dined at the college. After dinner at the table 
he spoke to the students again, commencing in 
his chair, and after a while rising to his feet. 
Dinner being concluded we rose to go out, but 
he stood talking with me some twenty minutes, 
telling how^ much he had thought about me and 
endeavouring to encourage me all ways. After a 
while we went up-stairs and he staid about an 
hour in my room talking with me encourag- 
ingly and showing how everything I brought up 
about my religious experience corresponded with 
his own. . . . He invited me earnestly to come 



112 LIFE OF JOHN H. DILLINGHAM 

and see him at his house. He expressed himself 
as much rejoiced to have had this opportunity, 
and said, ' Now I know thee better.' 



> ?? 



" West Haverford, 25, x, '67. 
" My stumbling at the cross is nearly at an 
end, I hope. My views of the propitiation are 
more settled. I expect liberty when they are, 
and hope to be able to tell thee what the Gospel 
is; yet trust rather in the spirit adding to thee 
strength and faith therein." 

" West Haverford, Pa., 19, ii, '68. 
To his Father and Mother 

" In the cars [returning from West Falmouth] 
I desired nothing to come in the way this week 
to interfere with that dedication of the heart 
which I began to feel constrained unto in a 
most unusual exercise of spirit pointing to a 
being dead to sin and alive unto God. Pray for 
me that I may be strengthened to give up all, 
even if it need be, those whom I most love, in 
the baptism of regeneration, and that I may not 
resist the Lord's saving and transforming hand 
upon me. The exercise did not last long, but in 
it I saw a glimpse of the fearful responsibility 
of having been born. And if the same view 
should come upon either of you, just try to lay 



DEVELOPMENT OF EELIGIOUS LIFE 113 

hold of a confidence in Him who came to deliver 
them who through fear of death are subject to 
bondage.'^ 

" W. Haverford, Pa., 2, v, '68. 
" I sometimes in a little degree realize that 
at some time one of us will have to lose the other 
from this world. I dare not imagine how it 
would seem if I should lose thee, or thou should 
lose me. But one or the other of us is, in all 
probability, to experience that trial. Now, I 
think neither of us thinks so much about the 
personal loss, as whether it shall be well with the 
other. Thou knowest how in spite of all the evi- 
dences of brother Moses' happy departure, still 
thou suffered at seasons with agony of doubt and 
suspense for his sake concerning his present state 
of being. Now I want it to be so that if either 
of us dies the one shall not have any occasion 
to doubt of the triumphant departure and ever- 
lasting joy of the other. I have been drawn to 
a nearness to thee all my da3^s by thy sufferings, 
and mourn for thee however much I might when 
they were over, how could I not cheerfully de- 
liver thee up to the arms of Jesus who would 
carry thee through the valley of the shadow of 
death and place thee forever in triumphant 
glory, — who would do so much better for thee 
there, than I could by holding thee. I know of 



114 LIFE OF JOHN H. DILLINGHAM 

no consolation other than the sense of this being 
true for thee. This in the ease of my departure 
to be with Christ would be all that could con- 
sole thee — it might well indeed make thee rejoice 
all thy days. Let us then, if for no higher con- 
sideration, at least for each other's sake endeavor 
to know and to assure each other of having 
passed from death into life. Let us think in 
every act of our life, I will follow the blessed 
Jesus in this deed towards leaving John that 
richest bequest of knowing I am in glory, — or, 
I will be pure and blameless in this that mother 
may know of having laid up the treasure of 
another soul in heaven and her heart may be 
at ease. So may we be led forward to higher 
grounds, wherein in entire resignation, we may 
be the disciples of Jesus by having left all to 
follow Him.'' 

" West Haverford, 1, vi, '68. 
" My twenty-ninth birthday. I should not 
think I was so old, for I feel as much like a 
boy as ever. I should like to be dedicated to 
the highest good from this time forward; but 
I am not my own keeper, and so may I be dedi- 
cated to the keeper of souls and trust in Him." 

" Philadelphia, 8, ix, '68. 
" Thou should feel pretty bright and peaceful 
about this time, if my prayers are answered. 



DEVELOPMENT OF RELIGIOUS LIFE 115 

Things can only seem dark when they are not 
all given up to our Savior, and things are 
blessed to us as they are yielded in trust to 
Him. My present peace consists in trust. So 
be it with thee." 

" Monument (en route to Haverford) , 17, ix, '68. 

" Arrived at Monument having thus far abid- 
ing peace of mind. Let us be exercised to main- 
tain this by trust in Jesus. Absolute trust 
— there is nothing like it to give us peace. 

". I have feared a little thou might be feeling 
some foreboding about our seeing each other 
again, and I have desired to reassure thee that 
as our confidence and trust are in Christ, I feel 
that we shall be privileged to enjoy each other's 
company and presence and sight again and per- 
haps many times again. Only let us be given 
up and give each other up to Him in whom our 
only hope is. I feel safe about thee and our 
relations for the future, and have the usual 
feeling that we shall have each other as 
earthly blessings if we will only take these 
blessings from Christ and in Him. Do not feel 
any discouragement or borrowed foreboding. 
All is safety with the Saviour. Thou and I 
will be cared for, more than we can ask or 
think." 



116 LIFE OF JOHN H. DILLINGHAM 

Thus we have the goal of his religious life in 
trust. For him it did not mean that all ques- 
tions were answered, or all difficulties solved. 
It did mean that he could commit them all with 
himself to a " faithful Creator '' in " absolute 
trust." 



CHAPTER VII 

JOHN H. DILLINGHAM AS MINISTER 

Although the record of the development of 
John Dillingham's religious life, as given in 
letters and random notes, is but fragmentary, 
one chord is struck so often as to be definitely 
dominant. The whole energy of his being was 
focused on realizing what in modern phrase is 
called the '^ Christ-consciousness J' During the 
twenty-one years of his acknowledged ministry, 
this experience found expression very often in 
the Scripture " For me to live is Christ." This, 
it might be said, was the goal of his religious 
aspiration and his courage to reach the goal was 
very largely maintained as he realized more and 
more, to use another Scripture phrase often on his 
lips, that he was "bought with a price." Few min- 
isters within the limit of his activity displayed 
more originality and more versatility of text and 
context, and yet in some subtle way, every road 
of knowledge and of experience that he knew 
led up to the central fact of actual Christianity 
— a living Christ pouring out His life unto death 
for the sake of the world. 

117 



118 LIFE OF JOHN H. DILLINGHAM 

How this experience of a " Christ-conscious- 
ness " grew into a definite call to the public 
ministry is not recorded except by intimation 
in letters or other notes that have come to hand. 
Perhaps the nearest approach to it is the fol- 
lowing to his mother from Brattleboro, 1st, ni. 
'63 : " I feel that the realities of life are having 
a gracious influence on me, and sometimes I 
hanker to get to a Quaker meeting and unburden 
myself. I feel that I have a work to do which 
I know not of. Probably when in process of 
time I get educated to the right state, I shall 
find out Avhat I was made for. This I know, 
that I have a longing to know the truths and 
then to communicate it to my fellow-beings, and 
while the field is indeed the world, the special 
field is Friends' Society." 

Three times in letters to his mother in 1866 
he mentions his offerings in meeting. 

Thus, Haverford College, 19, iii, '66: "I 
had to take the cross in meeting last Fifth-day 
in supplication." 

Again, Haverford College, 17, vi, '66: "T 
trust I did no wrong to-day with a few words 
in meeting," and West Haverford, 28, x, '66 : 
" T somehow feel more strength and confidence 
than common since appearing in prayer at our 
First-day meeting yesterday. David Scull, one 



JOHN H. DILLINGHAM AS MINISTER 119 

of the managers, came and expressed his unity 
and satisfaction. In spite of all my forebodings, 
there is greater freedom in this part of Phila- 
delphia with reference to such things than in 
Falmouth." Little is indicated by these obser- 
vations other than the naturally sensitive nature 
with which he was endowed. It is interesting to 
note in passing that during this year, 1866, his 
certificate of membership was received at Twelfth 
Street Meeting, Philadelphia. The Monthly Meet- 
ing appointed Samuel Bettle and Charles Yarn all 
to visit him on this account. At the same ses- 
sion of the Monthly Meeting, William U. Ditzler 
w^as recognized as a minister. These three 
Friends became influential in no small degree 
in shaping John Dillingham's future. More 
than a hint of this is to be detected in this 
extract from an address at the opening of " Fal- 
mouth Old Home Week '' in 1904 : 

" When I take my seat in meeting in Phila- 
delphia, I sometimes think how has its occupancy 
degenerated from the time when it held that 
grand old man Samuel Bettle; whose voice was 
like an organ and his authority as an apostle. 
In the same seat at times had sat his father, 
whose clear mental powers were the admiration 
of judges of courts, whose business integrity had 
the esteem of his fellow-merchants of Philadel- 



120 LIFE OF JOHN H. DILLINGHAM 

phia, whose gift in the ministry edified the 
churches, and whose authority in best wisdom, 
once held, gave the word in season to spare the 
membership from being rent in twain." 

The twenty-three years which intervened be- 
tween 1866 and 1899 were well filled with meeting 
activities. He had important service as Over- 
seer and Elder in Twelfth Street Meeting. Doubt- 
less a good providence was enlarging the field 
for the exercise of his gift in the ministry, by 
bringing him thus into close touch with the mem- 
bership of what for some time was the largest 
Monthly JMeeting of Friends in the world. 

During all this period, however, behind de- 
voted service in college and school and meeting 
there was evidently sounding in his soul the 
sense of a call to proclaim by word of mouth as 
well as by life " the acceptable year of the 
Lord." " Fireside talks at his mother's knee," 
an overpowering sense of the love of God in 
the fields, the restraints of the grace of God 
when in anger he would have retaliated upon 
a schoolmate who had offended him — the mem- 
ory of these all gave added force to prophetic 
messages in which gifted ministers pictured his 
spiritual condition and the outcome of his 
spiritual condition in dedication to the call of 
the Highest. One such incident we are able in 



JOHN H. DILLINGHAM AS MINISTER 121 

some detail to narrate although the place and 
date of it are not certainly known. There are 
indications that it was at New Bedford. At 
any rate while still a member of New England 
Yearly Meeting, not unlikely Avhile at Harvard 
in 1864, he had gone to attend a Quarterly Meet- 
ing. Some sealed envelopes containing widely 
advertised literature of an unprofitable, possibly 
of a deleterious character were in his pocket. 
As he retired to his room for the night before 
the meeting, probably at the home of Benjamin 
Howland, he found a fire blazing on the open 
hearth. He sat doT^n beside it with the inten- 
tion of examining the forbidden literature. As 
he took the envelopes in his hand a powerful 
sense of God's restraining grace possessed him. 
Without parleying long, he put the envelopes 
unopened upon the burning embers and had a 
sure sense of peace in seeing them reduced to 
ashes. In the meeting next morning, Eli Jones 
was engaged in speaking most directly to his 
condition — drew a plain picture of the doubts 
that had assailed him, and then in an impressive 
manner pointed out the door of hope, and the 
service that awaited the tried soul who would 
give up and enter this door. In conclusion and 
in a manner that brought back the glowing fire 
and the smoking paper to John Dillingham's 



122 LIFE OF JOHN H. DILLINGHAM 

mind, lie said, " If thou wilt do these things 
all thy burnt sacrifices will be accepted." Not 
unlikely the feeling toward Sibyl Jones con- 
tained in the following letter to his mother has 
also some connection with the foregoing incident : 

" Haverford College, 7, vi, '66. 
" On Fifth-day I rejoiced in spirit because of 
the company of Sibyl Jones, who, on her return 
from her religious visit in Virginia, was at 
Haverford that day to see her son Richard and 
to attend our meeting. . . . Sibyl Jones sought 
an interview with me in the afternoon and spoke 
just what 1 thought I needed to hear and just 
the things which had been on my mind and 
which I wanted to ask her about, had not her 
spiritual apprehension been enlightened to an- 
ticipate my inquiries. I felt encouraged and 
strengthened as by a message from heaven. 
When she said I had accepted the Savior and 
He had accepted me I mentally asked, ^ Why 
then have I no evidence that He has accepted 
me? ' and the very next thing she said was the 
answer, ' Thou wilt have an evidence of it more 
and more as thou continuest faithful to Him.' 
She said she felt very clearly that I was in the 
right place and that a path of rich service and 
usefulness was before me, not because I was 



JOHN H. DILLINGHAM AS MINISTER 123 

capable or worthy to occupy it, but because the 
power and mercy of the Lord would appear 
working by me as I kept constantly before the 
throne of grace for help, ^ praying without ceas- 
ing.' ' Fret not thyself because of evil doers.' 
' Be faithful unto death and I will give thee 
a crown of life.' " 

From the date of this letter, 1866, to 1889, 
there is no reference in John Dillingham's 
journal to appearances in the ministry. The 
journal is continuous from 1866 to 1874, a period 
of eight years. They were years of unsettle- 
ment in his life because of an effort to adjust 
himself to a system of administration very dif- 
ferent from that of his first years at Haverford 
College, and very uncongenial to the ideas of 
self-government with which he had been imbued 
at Harvard. In 1878 the scene of his activity 
was changed to Philadelphia as he entered upon 
the principalship of Friends' Select School. The 
new position gave him greater freedom of service 
in religious matters, not only because the hours 
of obligation to school routine were totally 
changed, but also because of a distinct change 
in the nature of his duties. Under date of 
Eleventh Mo., 2d, 1889, we have a record in 
regard to his acknowledgment as a minister. 



124 LIFE OF JOHN H. DILLINGHAM 

" Not having attempted journal- writing since 
the last written in this book fifteen years ago 
(9 mo., 19, 1874), I am induced to record hence- 
forth some daily observations as they may in- 
terest me or time may afford, because this seems 
to be another important day in my history. I 
have learned with humiliation together with the 
encouragement naturally felt at the unity of 
Friends in a great concern, that our Quarterly 
Meeting of Ministers and Elders in Philadelphia 
has united in the judgment of our last sitting 
of the Western District Monthly Meeting in 
acknowledging my public appearances in our 
meetings for worship as of a right gift in the min- 
istry. This result I did not expect to-day, because 
I have never observed a minister acknowledged in 
our Select Quarterly Meeting on the same day 
on which the recommendation was read. . . . 

" I was expecting to feel a burden lifted by 
hearing such a conclusion as that my time for 
acknowledgment had not yet come. But no sucli 
lifting of responsibility has been allowed me; 
and with hands still put to the plow there must 
be no looking back; but may there be a faithful 
following on to know the Lord in all His lead- 
ings and offices towards my unworthy soul and 
towards the souls of others through so unworthy 
a channel." 



JOHN H. DILLINGHAM AS MINISTER 125 

Through the ensuing tAventj-one years the 
^^ faithful following on to know the Lord in all 
His leadings ^' brought our Friend into many re- 
markable experiences. The few that we are able 
to narrate are fairly tj^pical of his close follow- 
ing of his Guide and of his special character as 
a minister. 

Not long after being acknowledged he found 
it necessary to spend some time at a hotel in the 
Adirondacks on account of a threatened throat 
affection. The one hundred guests that made 
up the family of which he was a part were 
solid, sober people, but our Friend found that 
there was no arrangement on First-day for any 
united expression of the privileges of worship. 
This unw^elcome feature of his temporary exile 
weighed heavily upon his mind. In the after- 
noon of First-day, he retired to a quiet wood 
near by, and as he was engaged in pacing back 
and forth under this burden, he came upon a 
clergyman apparently also engaged in serious 
meditation. After a salutation John Dilling- 
ham proceeded to say how he felt about the 
absence of any religious observance in so large 
a family. The clergyman confessed that he had 
been brought into the solitude of the wood in 
a hope that he might find some suitable solution 
of the same situation, which was also quite pain- 



126 LIFE OF JOHN H. DILLINGHAM 

ful to him. He proposed that they should unite 
in arranging a meeting the following First-day. 
John Dillingham explained his view in regard 
to a prescribed service and indicated that he 
would be relieved if the clergyman would go 
forward with necessary arrangements without 
including him. This led to considerable conver- 
sation about a spontaneous service under the 
direct leadership of Christ. Finally the clergy- 
man said he would like to join in a meeting of 
that kind and together they arranged with the 
proprietor of the hotel for it. The response to 
the notice of the meeting was general and at 
the appointed time practically all the guests 
were assembled. After a brief silence, the 
clergyman was on his feet but seemed in much 
embarrassment to find words to express himself ; 
finally he concluded his effort by an ofering of 
prayer in which the hesitation and embarrass- 
ment were also apparent. Directly John Dil- 
lingham arose and using a text that had seemed 
to come to his mind almost immediately upon 
taking his seat, he found much freedom to set 
forth some fundamentals of worship under the 
gospel order. When the meeting concluded, the 
clergyman, with tears in his eyes, confessed that 
he had been unfaithful to his compact about 
preparation for the meeting. The day before 



JOHN H. DILLINGHAM AS MINISTER 127 

he had taken his Bible, had chosen a text, and 
put certain considerations in order in his mind 
so that he might treat it properly. Upon settling 
into the silence of the meeting, the text went 
from his memory, and the embarrassment which 
all had witnessed had not been without a definite 
cause. After he had taken his seat, John Dil- 
lingham used his text and apparently, to him, 
preached his sermon. So a most wonderful ex- 
hibition was had of the reality of the Quaker 
profession and of the special guidance that 
qualified John Dillingham for his service. 

It was some years after this instance, that 
a situation in regard to recognizing a gift in 
the ministry in a Quarterly Meeting in New 
Jersey took an unusual hold of John Dilling- 
ham's mind. The Friend under consideration 
had been one with whom he had had experiences 
that quite convinced him of the gift, although 
he very freely recognized its particular limita- 
tions. During three months of consideration as to 
what his duty might be in the case, he more than 
once sought advice of a close personal friend. 
In each instance this friend was inclined to 
discourage him from attempting any part in the 
case. During the night before the Select 
Quarterly Meeting he was wakened with a dis- 
tinct sense that he must yield to the impression 



128 LIFE OF JOHN H. DILLINGHAM 

of duty at whatever cost. He had made no 
arrangement to reach the place of the meeting 
and he knew the nearest railroad station was 
several miles away. The trolley-car in Phila- 
delphia that carried him to the station was 
halted at the top of the Market Street hill 
within two or three minutes of the time of the 
last available train. He left the car hastily and 
as he passed the first small street a slip of paper 
blew across his path and he grasped it as he 
hurried along. Once in the ferryboat, he looked 
at the paper and found it contained a remark- 
able Scripture text. He folded it and put it in 
his vest pocket. When the train which he took 
reached the station nearest the Quarterly Meet- 
ing, he descended to the platform to be surprised 
by a voice from a waiting vehicle asking him 
to get in and ride to the Quarterly Meeting of 
Ministers and Elders. The Friend so soliciting 
him was the one in the whole Quarter that he 
most desired to confer with about the case in 
hand. In good Quaker phrase they had a full 
and free opportunity much to John Dillingham's 
satisfaction. In the meeting when the item of 
business was reached that had seemed in such 
an unusual way to have concerned our friend, 
he found himself almost to his own surprise 
using the text that he had folded up and put 



JOHN H. DILLINGHAM AS MINISTER 129 

into liis pocket on the ferryboat. So much was 
he made a mouthpiece of a judgment clearly not 
his own that the meeting freely recognized it 
and relieved him by the form of their action 
from any sense of embarrassment that might 
have arisen from a feeling that he was interfer- 
ing with their business. 

Altogether different from this incident, but 
illustrating again the definite " leadings " of his 
Lord, some circumstances connected with his 
attendance at a wedding in Trenton, New Jersey, 
may be recited. Two Friends of his meeting 
associated with the proposed marriage as over- 
seers knew of his intention to be present and 
very kindly made the needful inquiry about 
trains. The evening before, they went to his 
house, told him the hour of starting, and pro- 
posed that he should join them in good time at 
the station. To their sore disappointment he 
did not appear, and they began the journey with 
feelings of chagrin. Some accident delayed their 
train and they did not reach the meeting until the 
marriage was concluded. To their surprise and 
relief, upon entering the meeting-house John 
Dillingham was sitting in the gallery as they 
would have desired. He had wakened early in 
the morning with a sense that it would be better 
for him to take a train in advance, and yielding 



130 LIFE OF JOHN H. DILLINGHAM 

to siich an intimation, was in his right place by 
what seemed to all a special good providence. 

In the chapter on John Dillingham the 
Teacher, an instance is narrated in which there 
was a manifest advantage to the religious ser- 
vice of our Friend, in being late at a funeral. 
Another striking instance of the kind afforded 
unusual confirmation of the words of a deceased 
Friend, and gave the people of the village where 
it occurred a most impressive sense of his per- 
sonal devotion to the family concerned as well 
as of his willingness to discharge his religious 
duties at whatever cost. Having missed the only 
possible train available from Camden for the 
funeral in question, John Dillingham boarded 
an express train to Atlantic City, thirty miles 
distant by bicycle from the place of his appoint- 
ment. The funeral company gathered at the 
house as arranged, and sat for about an hour 
in silence. Most of those present were not 
Friends and it seemed to them slight respect 
was shown to one who had been known in their 
midst for thirty years for liberality in enter- 
taining members of her society. The funeral 
had moved from the house and as the burial- 
ground was near, a few minutes would suffice 
to conclude the last sad rites for a beloved 
mother and sister. At this juncture, John Dil- 



JOHN H. DILLINGHAM AS MINISTER 131 

ingham was seen approaching upon a wheel from 
the direction of Atlantic City. He had ridden 
the thirty miles in a very short time and had 
reached his destination at the critical moment. 
Means were found of giving him some refresh- 
ment promptly and as the company closed in 
about the open grave he moved forward with 
a testimony that seemed to savor more of heaven 
than of earth. Then he knelt in prayer, and all 
were baptized together in a memorable manner. 
One of the principals in this remarkable scene 
had remembered, and had remarked when the 
train had failed to bring John Dillingham, how 
the deceased had said on more than one occasion, 
when the narrative in Biographical Sketches of 
an incident in the life of Arthur Howell had 
been read to her, picturing how he had driven 
some miles to join a surprised company about 
an open grave, that something like that, she felt, 
would happen at her funeral. Whatever else 
may be said of the incident, this at least was 
true, the fifteen hundred residents of that iso- 
lated town were saying to one another as they 
lit their evening fires that the Friends display 
an extraordinary measure of love toward one 
another even in this day. 

It was in this same neighborhood that an- 
other experience of special leading made a 



132 LIFE OF JOHN H. DILLINGHAM 

marked impression. In conjunction with Eliza 
H. Varney an appointed evening meeting in 
a Union Chapel was about to conclude. John 
Dillingham knelt in prayer. With much fer- 
vency he pleaded for several conditions and sev- 
eral classes, then as if a moment hesitating, his 
supplication was for " any widow whose husband 
may still be living." As the meeting concluded 
one who sat by the Friend who had arranged 
the meeting turned to him somewhat sharply 
with the question, "' Why did you tell him that? '' 
In a moment it was evident to the interrogator 
that no previous knowledge of the condition 
thus strikingly pictured had been possessed by 
any of the Friends, and he confessed his amaze- 
ment at the distinct leading of the Holy Spirit, 
in what proved in good measure to have been a 
healing ministration. The recital of these in- 
cidents is intended to show the type of John 
Dillingham's ministry. He had a peculiar re- 
ticence about speaking of such matters, but those 
who lived near enough to him realized how 
closely he felt called to surrender every day and 
every event of his life to special guidance, in a 
belief that the Scripture picture of being yoked 
with Christ is intended as a practical reality. 

Thus his religious service as a minister be- 
came a daily service and the dominating note in 



JOHN H. DILLINGHAM AS MINISTER 133 

the duties to which he was called. Four or five 
times only in twenty-one years did he have 
Minutes to pursue this service beyond what 
might be called the home circle and yet few 
ministers have occupied their gift with greater 
diligence. It was noted above that prior to his 
acknowledgment as a minister he had served his 
Monthly Meeting as an elder. In this capacity 
he had a Minute for service as companion of 
William U. Ditzler in visits to public institu- 
tions in Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and Dela- 
ware. The oft-interrupted Journal has some 
notes relating to this service which are inter- 
esting, both because of their intrinsic worth, and 
because of their references to several well-known 
public Friends. 

" 9, XI, 1889. 
" Accompanied William U. Ditzler to Tren- 
ton, in pursuance of the concern of his Minute 
granted by our Monthly Meeting to visit chari- 
table and penal institutions and attend Friends' 
meetings in their neighborhoods. A month later 
[than the date of his Minute] I also obtained 
a Minute to accompany him as an elder. In the 
Spring I visited with him Woodbury, N. J., 
Middletown and West Chester, Pa., and in 5th 
mo. being laid aside by sickness, have not accom- 



134 LIFE OF JOHN H. DILLINGHAM 

panied him again thus until now. We found 
Philip and Elizabeth Dunn prepared to welcome 
us cheeringly, and our evening was made long 
and interesting by dear William's narrations 
and much mutual conversation. 

" He narrated an instructive account related 
yesterday to him by a Presbyterian clergyman of 
one McElroy in business on Market Street, whose 
trade had declined in consequence of a sickness 
he had been passing through. A note was to be 
paid by three o'clock at the bank, and every 
friend to whom he had applied had failed to 
relieve him, by accommodating him with means 
to satisfy the note. The clergyman had found 
him in the morning despondent in prospect of 
the financial ruin which he expected on that 
day. ^Has not Ood always helped you thus 
far? ' said the minister. ' He has,' said McElroy. 
' Does he not say ^* I will never leave thee nor 
forsake thee"?' ' Yes.' ' Then trust in him a little 
longer.' About two o'clock a man came in, whom 
he had known years before, who said ' I had 
beard of your sickness, and as I was at my de- 
votions you came so distinctly before my mind, 
and so dwelt with me, that I have come to offer 
you these |2000 in case you are in any distress 
or embarrassment so as to need the money.' So 
the note was paid that hour." 



JOHN H. DILLINGHAM AS MINISTER 135 

" 10, XI, '89. 

" In the meeting at Trenton, tho' embarrassed 
at the thought of preceding William, I was pub- 
licly engaged in a concern to let our light shine, 
the fiat haviug first taken place in our dark 
hearts, ' Let there be light' Sin thus discov- 
ered and through repentance toward God and 
faith toward our Lord Jesus Christ, forgiven, 
we are purified ' from dead works to serve the 
living God, in the midst of a crooked and per- 
verse nation, among whom ye shine as lights in 
the world.' William followed in his usual mov- 
ing earnestness and power, and likewise in lively 
supplication. Elizabeth Dunn presented a most 
salutary exercise concerning the faithful observ- 
ance of the marriage covenant. Philip Dunn 
afterwards pronounced it as a meeting in which 
Truth was in dominion. 

" At the State's Prison we met at 3 p.m. some 
200 convicts, about 40 being females. The men 
wore garments made with horizontal stripes, 
which appeared to be a degrading manner of 
dress. Something, whether that or not, gave 
them a more degraded and sullen aspect of coun- 
tenance than we are familiar with in our Eastern 
Penitentiary. Elizabeth Dunn spoke to them 
appropriately, relating accounts of four she had 
known living good lives and ending well after 



136 LIFE OF JOHN H. DILLINGHAM 

release from their terms within those walls. 
William was most earnestly engaged before them 
for a considerable time. When he had concluded 
I was moved, in use of the words, ' Or those 
eighteen on whom the tower in Siloam fell,' etc., 
to speak of the work and blessing of repentance 
and how produced. William followed in prayer 
of uncommon sublimity and added loving exhor- 
tations as he closed the meeting, and passed on 
among them to go out." 

In the same Service under date of 17, xi, '89 : 

" Seventh-day, p.m.^ Elhanan Zook of Down- 
ingtoT^TQ and I accompanied Wm. U. Ditzler to 
Haddonfield, going to Hannah and Hettie Evans's 
to tea, whither my wife had preceded us. After 
an instructive and much enjoyed evening in the 
Evans sisters' house, Charles and Beulah Ehoads 
being there with us at tea, we accompanied the 
latter to their home to lodge. The meeting next 
forenoon was lively and impressive by the solemn 
engagements of William in exhortation and 
prayer. A lively concern arose in me early but 
for modesty of appearing forward again I de- 
layed till after William had spoken. Tho' it 
did not then seem altogether too late, it was his 
view as mine, that the testimony lost much of 
its freshness and favor by my backwardness. 



JOHN H. DILLINGHAM AS MINISTER 137 

" It did appear to me that the greatest enemy 
to the Church and people was a spirit of too 
much dwelling at ease in worldly comfort. 
^ When the enemy cometh in like a flood, the 
spirit of the Lord shall lift up a standard against 
him.' 

" After dinner we rode to the Alms House at 
Blackwood tOAvn, nine miles distant. I had the 
privilege of accompanying Charles and Deborah 
Rhoads with Wm. Ditzler, and my wife, Joseph 
and Hettie Evans with Elhanan Zook. The 
County house appears now a well-kept institu- 
tion. William fully relieved his concern before 
the assembled inmates. Then Charles Rhoads 
was instructively engaged, dwelling on the teach- 
ing of the account of the King's marriage supper. 
I looked on myself as excused from adding a 
word to the much that had been delivered; but 
as our waiting continued I was unexpectedly 
drawn forth before them. Deborah Rhoads fol- 
lowed in much favored supplication. After the 
meeting we conversed with some of the inmates 
and visited the room of the aged and infirm 
women. Returned to Haddonfield and spent 
evening at Levi Cowperthwaite's. He is under 
a deep and living concern as a minister, but is 
not yet formally acknowledged. He has the 
offer of cashiership of the U. S. Mint in Phi la- 



138 LIFE OF JOHN H. DILLINGHAM 

delphia, having now a lower but yet very respon- 
sible position there. William told us of his 
early life and remarkable leadings toward the 
faith of Friends, and his joining in religious 
profession with them. We returned from 
Charles Khoads's next morning in time for me 
to reach school before nine." 

Two other accounts of religious service with 
Minutes from his Monthly Meeting are from his 
pen. The first is a letter to his uncle Edward 
Dillingham : 

" 140 N. 16th St., Philadelphia, • 
" 14, V, '92. 

" My dear Uncle : 

" Having had in contemplation for several 
weeks past a visit to Friends in Tuckerton, N. J., 
and learning when the promised day 5 mo. 1st 
was near that Eliza H. Varney, of Bloomfield, 
Canada, was concerned to pay a similar religious 
visit on the same day, and that her service would 
be best aided by one or two appointed meetings, 
in which I for myself also apprehended a share, 
I obtained from my Monthly Meeting a Minute 
for such appointments. It seemed best that a 
meeting should be held at Barnegat in the 
Friends' meeting-house at 3 r.M. on Seventh-day, 
and that we should proceed later in the day to 



JOHN H. DILLINGHAM AS MINISTER 139 

Tuckerton, and consider there what further 
service might open. 

" Arriving at Barnegat before noon, we were 
visited by an aged Friend whose name was 
Robert B. Stokes. He had come from a farm 
a mile and a half out of the village to make 
acquaintance with the Friends who had ap- 
pointed a meeting, which he thought he would 
not be able to attend. On being asked concern- 
ing his hearing, he said that brought him to a 
subject which he seldom if ever mentioned. It 
had been made known to him in younger days, 
that if he was not faithful he would lose his 
hearing, or his sight, or his speech. His eyes 
at one time became impaired, but now he had 
all the three senses pretty well preserved. He 
was encouraged to believe that such faithfulness 
as he had maintained had been accepted, and, 
should he hold the beginning of his confidence 
steadfast unto the end, he might realise the Ian- 
gauge, ' My flesh and my heart f aileth : but God is 
the strength of my heart, and my portion forever.' 
He replied : ' I can say " Amen " to that, and I 
believe His grace will continue sufficient for 
me to the last.' He proceeded to mention some 
of his past leadings in grace, the end of which was 
that he knew nothing but love toward all his 



140 LIFE OF JOHN H. DILLINGHAM 

fellow-beings, and when, he should be taken away, 
he desired it might be in a manner which should 
make no trouble to any in his last sickness. He 
expressed much concern for the prevailing out- 
wardness of people's lives and interests, not only 
in the world but in their profession of Christi- 
anity and worship; and desired that they might 
dwell deeper in the root of life, and realize 
Christ in them as their hope of glory. Kecur- 
ring to his former visitations, he mentioned his 
having largely employed workmen, to some of 
whom he had occasionally spoken with harsh- 
ness. But afterwards he could find no peace, 
day or night, till he had gone to these and 
acknowledged his fault and endeavored to com- 
fort them. 

" He was persuaded to remain to dinner with 
us and afterward to attend the meeting, and it 
was promised that there should be a conveyance 
home for him after the meeting. On entering 
the meeting-house enclosure and observing the 
recent improvements in the grave-yard, he 
wanted to stop and be told where his own grave 
was to be, but lack of time prevented this. He 
entered the meeting-house and took his seat in 
front of the meeting beside me. In the early 
silence which followed there was felt to be an 
obstruction to the flow of life in the meeting 



JOHN H. DILLINGHAM AS MINISTER 141 

owing to the expectation of the company being 
on the ministers before them, rather than from 
Him upon whom alone we should wait, and who 
if truly worshipped would preach His own ser- 
mons. This was expressed to the company vocally. 
In the more sensible opening for worship which 
seemed to follow, Eliza H. Varney entered into 
earnest vocal supplication for the blessing of the 
Most High upon us. An exhortation followed 
concerning the life which we now live in the flesh, 
its relation to our future being, the importance 
of its being lived with Christ and in Him, even 
by the faith of Him who loved us and gave 
Himself for us. Our friend E. H. V. continued 
in an exercise harmonious with this, asking: 
' What is your life? It is even a vapor that 
appeareth for a little time and then vanisheth 
away ^ ; exhorting us to set our affection on 
things above and not on things on the earth, 
seeking first the kingdom of God. Much of a 
lively and solemnizing effect was interspersed. 
A holy covering of good seemed resting over the 
meeting to the end, and the silence in which 
we waited, which could not be broken because 
some further service seemed awaiting, we knew 
not what, was at length concluded by the dear 
aged Friend Robert B. Stokes rising and speak- 
ing after this manner : 



142 LIFE OF JOHN H. DILLINGHAM 

" ' I want to set my seal to the truths of the 
gospel which have been spread before us this 
day. I hope it will be a day long remembered 
in this place, and the truth which has been 
declared will be like a nail fastened in a sure 
place, and not vanish like a morning cloud. Let 
us all make straight steps towards the city which 
hath foundations, and let us forget the things 
which are behind and press forward towards 
those that are before, through our Lord Jesus 
Christ. I cannot speak as I could once, but 
I want us all to lay fast hold on the favor that 
we have had to-day, and press towards the mark ; 
and may we all be prepared to meet in the King- 
dom prepared for all those who love the Lord.' 

" Having said this he sat down, and at once 
leaned his head on my shoulder, breathing heav- 
ily. Friends came quietly forward to lay him 
out on the bench and administer restoratives. 
But in two or three minutes he ceased to breathe, 
and the peace which passeth understanding 
rested upon the scene. We lingered long but 
at length all passed to their homes, in the midst 
of a beautiful calm, in which all nature seemed 
held until the sun went down. 

" It may be in place to note here, that in the 
course of one of the communications to which 
Eobert Stokes had been listening in that meet- 



JOHN H. DILLINGHAM AS MINISTER 143 

ing, wlien the condition of being ' crucified with 
Christ ' was spoken of, the case of the two on 
either side of the cross on Calvary was brought 
to view, — one of them unrepentant and joining 
with the multitude in dishonoring Jesus; and 
the other penitent, to whom the Savior said, 
' This day shalt thou be with me in Paradise.' 
At this last saying, I noticed that Robert Stokes 
gave some motion, or appearance of being 
affected by that promise of Jesus, so that he 
attracted my special notice at the moment. The 
sequel may suggest now more than a coincidence, 
since we are informed, what as visitors we did 
not know then, that in the early morning of 
that very day and in that same region three 
men from a drunken spree were driving home, 
when turning their horse too shortly they were 
thrown out upon the ground, and one of them 
was instantly killed by the breaking of his neck. 
The people have since been contrasting Robert's 
death met while preaching the gospel, and the 
other of so opposite a character. 

[After the Quarterly Meeting in Philadelphia 
on the second day following.] " We continued 
to feel that our service at Barnegat was not 
complete without attending the funeral of 
Robert B. Stokes. Accordingly on Fourth-day 



144 LIFE OF JOHN H. DILLINGHAM 

the two women companions and myself returned 
to I*arnegat. It was interesting to be at the 
recent home of the departed — the home of his 
brother Earzillai, — where we were hospitably 
cared for. At one o'clock we reached the meet- 
ing-house which soon was filled with a solemn- 
ized and sympathizing company, and several 
were gathered outside at the windows. The 
spirit of supplication was poured forth upon 
and through our Friend Eliza H. Varney. The 
occasion seemed to leave no room for words on 
my part. No message came to me to commu- 
nicate until Eliza, trembling because she feared 
she was standing in my way, was faithful to her 
call and was exercised in a fervent outpouring 
of the spirit of exhortation and comfort. Then 
I was shown what my portion of service was, 
and became engaged in setting it forth. A sup- 
plication by a minister of another denomination 
followed. . . . When we had repaired to the 
side of the grave, William Errickson, a citizen 
of Barnegat, read a fitting tribute to the char- 
acter and memory of the deceased, which seemed 
gratifying to the bereaved friends. Eliza Varney 
delivered a few words of impressive import and 
we left a spot which will long be marked in 
our memories. May many hearts be turned to 
the little Friends' meeting held there, and many 



JOHN H. DILLINGHAM AS MINISTER 145 

be gathered as the fruit of good old Robert 
Stokes's last ministrj/' 

The other account deals with an appointed 
meeting near Leeds Point, New Jersey. It is 
copied from The Friend: 

" 11, XI, '99. 
" Smithville is one of several New Jersey 
neighborhoods in which Friends were settled as 
early as the last quarter of the seventeenth cen- 
tury. It is across the Mullica River from 
Tuckerton, and is mentioned in Friends' jour- 
nals [as Galloway] with Little and Great Egg 
Harbor. The location of all the old meeting 
houses along the shore is not now certain. At 
Seaville, south of Beesley's Point, one of the 
oldest is still standing, and on the sandy knoll 
now occupied by the Methodist meeting-house 
at Smithville, we can be quite sure there was 
a Friends' meeting-house for many years prior 
to 1850. Not unlikely, George Fox stopped here 
on his journey through Jersey, for some part of 
his description seems to fix the locality very per- 
fectly. Be that as it may, Friends did not live 
and worship in the neighborhood for so many 
years without leaving an impress, and it is com- 
forting now to find well-preserved traditions of 



116 LIFE OF JOHN H. DILLINGHAM 

tlieir integrity of life and of their high spiritual 
attainments in religion. 

'' When the meeting at Smithville became ex- 
tinct, Friends gave the property there to the 
Methodists and tlicy have since maintained a 
meeting [the title for the graveyard lot is still 
in Haddoniield Monthly Meeting]. It appears 
there was an understanding that Friends might 
have the use of the Methodist house upon occa- 
sion, but the general friendliness of attitude of 
the people makes this easy without any special 
reference to that obligation. It is likely that 
during the past thirty years this privilege has 
not been sought more than twice, upon one 
occasion about fifteen 3^ears ago for a funeral, 
and now recently for the public meeting re- 
ferred to in this. Several Friends had enter- 
tained tbe feeling for two or three years past 
that such a public meeting should . be held in 
the neighborhood and one of them in particular, 
who had recently deceased, had urged it espe- 
cially during the last weeks of the Ninth Month. 
Her death seemed to leave the concern as a 
legacy upon tlie heart of a minister with a 
Minute for service along the shore. 

" Way was easily made for the appointment 
by the Methodist pastor now in charge and Sixth- 
day, Tenth Month, 27th, at half-past seven in 



JOHN H. DILLINGHAM AS MINISTER 147 

the evening, was selected as a favorable time. 
Four Friends, two of them ministers, were 
driven the six miles from Absecom that evening 
to keep the appointment. 

" The shore road is probably one of the oldest 
highways in the country. It extends with some 
degree of distinctness the whole length of the 
Jersey coast, and during the last century it is 
probable that one would pass at least ten meet- 
ing-houses in traversing it. Nearly every one of 
these is now closed, and in several cases the 
neglected condition of the grounds is a sad com- 
mentary upon the declension of the Society in 
those parts. 

" In riding to the Smithville meeting we were 
disposed to speculate a little upon the probable 
size and character of the congregation that 
would meet us there. The neighborhood is not 
thickly settled, and we finally concluded we 
should be satisfied if twenty persons came to- 
gether. Imagine our surprise then, upon arriv- 
ing, to find the house well filled, at least two 
hundred people (some estimates made the num- 
ber four hundred) being in readiness for the 
opportunity. The Methodist pastor w^as pre- 
sent, and leading the ministers into the pulpit 
he addressed a few well-chosen words to the con- 
gregation. He told them in order for the great- 



148 LIFE OF JOHN H. DILLINGHAM 

est good from the meeting and best to accomplish 
the purpose of the Friends, each soul must make 
an effort to get into communion with the Highest. 
He then took his seat, and a very solemn cover- 
ing of worship came over the company. Under 
the weight of this, authority seemed to be given 
to the Friend who had appointed the meeting to 
speak. He reminded them of the circumstance 
connected with the life of an eminent minister 
in Philadelphia [William U. Ditzler] who had 
felt a call to hold a meeting in a neighborhood 
somewhat noted as the centre of a fox-hunting 
club. It had seemed to human judgment an 
impracticable thing to get a meeting at their 
headquarters, and after some effort by interested 
parties the Friend was put off from attempting 
it. His faith, however, was not shaken. He 
felt sure that a way would be made to carry 
out what to his mind was clearly a Divine re- 
quirement. Finally the proprietor of the hotel 
that had been the headquarters of the club died, 
and very unexpectedly information of the funeral 
to be held came to the Friend who immediately 
said, ' It is the opportunity I have been looking 
for.' It was an occasion that brought together 
from far and near just the company that he 
had been exercised for, and the Gospel stream 
flowed out to them in a very wonderful man- 



JOHN H. DILLINGHAM AS MINISTER 149 

ner. It seemed to liim that the death of a man 
had finally been made the necessary occasion of 
opening the door to this remarkable service. 

" So in a sense it might be said also that the 
death of a good woman, a neighbor of theirs, and 
one whose birthplace stood amongst them, had 
been made use of to bring about the degree of 
faith and faithfulness on the visitor's part to 
appoint that meeting. She had earnestly de- 
sired it, and urged it, and had finally named a 
limit of time for its appointment, which had 
proved to be the last two weeks in which she 
would have had any strength at all to attend 
it. Her earnest desire for their welfare and 
strength in the Lord might yet descend upon 
them, and as her death had been used to incite 
one to faithfulness in appointing a meeting, so 
it might well be used to incite us all to faith 
in every word and work of the Lord Jesus. 

" But there was the death of another to which 
the holding of this meeting must chiefly be as- 
cribed, — the dying of Him who ^ tasted death 
for every man ' ; and thereby secured the unspeak- 
able gift through Christ crucified, without whom 
neither this nor any gathering in true Christian 
worship could be held. Futile would be this 
or any other movement among men for salva- 
tion, except for the one and only Name given 



150 LIFE OF JOHN H. DILLINGHAM 

under heaven and among men whereby we must 
be saved; and in His name, the witness of His 
spirit and power, must Ave know and follow the 
steps of our salvation, — a name which stands not 
in syllables or in word, but in power. And so 
' His name, thro' faith in His name,' we were 
persuaded, had made some of these strong, who 
were seen and known in their community; and 
we would that this occasion should have part 
in baptizing others and us all, ' into the name 
of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy 
Spirit.' So walking in Him their lives would 
be bearing no uncertain witness, that ' Ave know 
that the Son of God is come, and hath given 
us an understanding, that we may know Him 
that is true, and we are in Him that is true, 
even in His Son Jesus Christ. This is the true 
God and Eternal life.' 

" To these the message was particularly dwelt 
on in view of a religious awakening which had 
lately been known among them, ' as ye have re- 
ceived tlie Lord Jesus Christ, so walk ye in 
Him.' ^ If ye liA^e by the spirit, by the spirit 
let us also walk.' ^ Walk in the spirit and ye 
shall not fulfill the lusts of the flesh.' 

" To those that were exhorted to still receive 
Jesus Christ as Lord, the way of ' repentance 
toward God and faith toward our Lord Jesus 



JOHN H. DILLINGHAM AS MINISTER 151 

Christ/ was pointed out. Tlie faith in which 
He is thus received must be kept operative 
through obedience in the Avalk with Him to tbe 
end. The daily dwelling in His life during the 
week-day toil, or intercourse, or solitude — 
whether at home, afield, or on the sea — wat^ 
urged, that His name, through faith in His name, 
miglit make and keep them strong. 

^' Some might presume to be satisfied witli 
their first reception of Christ, and the remem- 
brance of a first enthusiasm; but He w^ould not 
see the desire of His soul and be satisfied, except 
as they should walk with Him the journey 
through. The path of the justified must be the 
path of the just, ' a^ a shining light, shining more 
and more unto the perfect day.' And, in short, 
the burden of the meeting seemed to be the need 
of daily realizing the language, ^ For me to live 
is Christ.' The fulness of God's love in all these 
gifts was then reverted to by the other minister. 
The gospel stream flowed out to them in large 
measure and interested tenderness attended the 
utterances to the end. 

" But a fragment of a building cannot be used 
as a specimen of the whole structure; neither 
can an abstract of the exercises of a meeting 
indicate the spirit of its life and impression. 

" After baptizing offerings of prayer and a 



152 LIFE OF JOHN H. DILLINGHAM 

testimony from the pastor to the remarkable 
favor and uplifting power of the occasion, signs 
for the dismissal of the meeting were given more 
than once, so loth did many seem to depart from 
the covering under which they were held. 

" By common consent, the opportunity was a 
very memorable one. The aisle was long crowded 
with men and women patiently waiting for a 
personal word, and a grasp of the visitors' hands. 
In George Fox's phrase the people were ^ very 
sweet and tender ' and the baptizing power of 
a pure ministry was feelingly witnessed. One 
remarked as w^e returned from the meeting that 
instrumental and vocal music in lieu of the 
solemn silence in which we were held in inter- 
vals, would have been felt as a violence to the 
spirit of the occasion, and have seemed like com- 
ing down from the high platform of privilege 
upon which celestial melodies had melted a 
whole congregation in love." 

These two accounts given in some detail fairly 
represent the character of John Dillingham's 
service as a minister aside from the meetings 
to which he regularly belonged. From 1892 to 
the time of his death he was frequently drawn 
to the New Jersey shore neighborhood. Hardly 
a year of this time passed without his attend- 



JOHN H. DILLINGHAM AS MINISTER 153 

ance at some regular or appointed meetings 
within those limits. 

In the main, the inhabitants of this district 
in character and temperament are quite like his 
" native folks " in New England and in a very 
special degree they looked upon him as under- 
standing them and their needs in spiritual 
things. 

Twice John Dillingham had brief calls for 
service in North Carolina. Once he was in 
Canada and twice at least after he was recog- 
nized as a minister he had the sanction of his 
Monthly Meeting for some special service in 
Pennsylvania, once at Harrisburg and once in 
the neighborhood of Curwensville. Often he 
felt that it would be a privilege to serve his 
Master in some more general religious visita- 
tion, but no clear call for that came to him. 
Not unlikely his usefulness was greater in 
closely heeding the numerous special calls within 
the environment in which he lived and worked. 
This environment included the school circle in 
Philadelphia, in which he felt a constant divine 
call, his Monthly, Quarterly, and Yearly Meet- 
ings and some of the important committees con- 
nected with them, and such agencies for good 
as the Pennsylvania Prison Society, the Penn- 
sylvania Bible Society, the Home for Incurables, 



154 LIFE OF JOHN H. DILLINGHAM 

several institutions for colored children and 
adults, and at times the city at large when he 
joined a Friend with such a general concern in 
holding public meetings. In all these interests, 
the one thought with John Dillingham was to 
know his place in the Heavenly order, which 
order had come to be a reality to him in spite 
of all the confusion and counter-purposes of 
men. His equipment for such a service might 
be variously estimated. Five years of strict 
Harvard training, two years in a circle of highly 
polished worldly society, a repudiation of tradi- 
tion in religion, a " home-coming " by the way 
of fundamental heart experience to the " fold " of 
his birth, these all had given him such breadth 
of view that he was rarely speaking from the 
standpoint of a single idea. 

So it came to pass that to some he seemed 
involved and difficult to follow in his public 
utterances. A very interesting part of such a 
situation was the fact that a number who had 
this view came in time to confess his ministry 
as of the utmost value to them. They grew to 
understand him without difficulty and to wonder 
what had been the former obstruction to their 
understanding. One of the most prominent 
English Friends of our day said in our hearing, 
" John is a very thought/tfZ minister," with an 



JOHN H. DILLINGHAM AS MINISTER 155 

emphasis that meant his ministry was " full of 
thought.'' This fact, and a sententious style 
which was the model of expression in his day 
at Harvard, put him in a class quite by himself 
as regards matter and manner. The spirit 
which was ministered through him, however, w^as 
not obscured by matter and manner. This spirit 
was that of gathering love to wait upon and 
serve the Minister of ministers. 

Unquestionably the most striking character- 
istic of John Dillingham as a minister was his 
originality. Now it was a well-known text to 
which he gave some new turn; now a common- 
place incident in daily life w^hich served the pur- 
pose of illustration; now some great historical 
event or personage in which he saw an unex- 
pected spiritual significance; now such an ordi- 
nary matter as the inscription " Lift up '' on a 
letter-box suggesting our part in communicating 
with the Highest; now a flaming sign as that 
of " The Academy of the Sacred Heart " suggest- 
ing the Psalmist's exhortation, " Keep thy heart 
with all diligence " ; always, everywhere, the 
spiritual to him was written behind symbol and 
form. 

To such as saw his ministry in this light an 
extreme of appreciation was easy. One such 
writes of him, " He always seemed to me the 



156 LIFE OF JOHN H. DILLINGHAM 

most gifted minister I had ever heard, with the 
possible exception of Phillips Brooks — combin- 
ing a superlative degree of spirituality with a 
superlative degree of intellectuality." 

This characteristic of originality — spiritual 
originality one might call it — made sermons that 
stand out vividly in the memory of those who 
felt their power. It has been an easy matter to 
collect numerous reminiscences of such. Two or 
three only can be included in this chapter. 

One writes from Muncy of a remarkable com- 
munication there, after the death of the beloved 
elder Jesse Haines. It had this striking text: 
" Dead fish swim with the current, but it takes 
a live fish to swim against it." In the presence 
of those who knew the quiet power of the de- 
parted worthy this of itself seemed a fitting 
epitome of his life. 

On the meeting-day at Friends' Select School 
following the death of William U. Ditzler, John 
Dillingham was led out into narratives of his 
life in a memorable manner. The large audi- 
ence of over three hundred children were held 
in rapt attention to the end. Upon the con- 
clusion of the meeting the late David Scull said 
it surpassed for clearness and convincing power 
any other sermon that he could remember to 
have heard. 



JOHN H. DILLINGHAM AS MINISTER 157 

In his own meeting at Twelfth Street, numer- 
ous striking communications are reported. Not 
a few will remember how upon one occasion he 
stopped suddenly and after a moment's pause 
said in effect, " the Spirit of Truth is best able 
to pursue this matter in each exercised heart, as 
He is given the right of way." One who was 
present and had allow^ed her mind to wander 
from a spiritual exercise tells how availingly 
this surprised turn brought her to the respon- 
sibility of personal worship. 

More than one of his fellow-members has re- 
ported that they were unusually impressed with 
a sermon during the last year of his life from the 
text, " They parted my garments among them, 
and for my vesture did they cast lots.'' The 
purport of the message was that in many direc- 
tions there is an inclination to appropriate the 
virtue of Christ in good works without a will- 
ingness to go doT^Ti with Him into baptism unto 
death. 

But one other memory need be added to con- 
clude this chapter, w^hich at the best can do no 
more than suggest a ministry that very cer- 
tainly stood not in words but in power. It is 
the tribute of one of his old scholars: "The 
biggest impression I ever got in connection with 
^ Master John ' — I may say from him — was at 



158 LIFE OF JOHN H. DILLINGHAM 

his funeral, when it seemed to me that his live, 
loving presence filled the whole meeting-house. 
I felt as if he had his arms around the whole 
assembly and was saying, ' I love you all.' " 



CHAPTER VIII 

JOHN H. DILLINGHAM AS EDITOR 

In Third Month, 1898, John Dillingham be- 
came editor of the Philadelphia Friend. The 
following diary entry shows his feelings at the 
prospect of this service. " I accepted this day 
the service of editing the Philadelphia Friend. 
While the Minute of appointment in our Board 
of Management was read, the lively language of 
my heart was : ^ Not I, but Christ. And the 
life which I now live in the flesh I live by the 
faith of the Son of God, who loved me and gave 
himself for me.' It seemed as if this was given 
for the future key-note of the paper.'' So a new 
and arduous field of labor was accepted as an 
opportunity to further the mission of the Society 
that now had come to be in his vision " a chosen 
vessel," to carry a rich freight of principles and 
testimonies to the world. This thought is some- 
what elaborated in his first editorial as follows: 
" The Society of Friends is one of principles 
rather than of men — primarily of principles and 
then of men professing to embody them. The 

159 



160 LIFE OF JOHN H. DILLINGHAM 

association of these principles, like the orderly 
elements of a crystal gathered around its 
nucleus, centres in the living and speaking 
Christ crucified. ' There is one even Christ 
Jesus that can speak to thy condition.' This 
revelation spoke the principle that made the 
first Quaker who received the name, and all 
those since who have been truly so. ..." And 
then in conclusion : '' We invite men and women, 
not to the mere absence of forms, but through 
their absence to the presence of life ; not to bare 
silence, but by way of silence, to the living Word ; 
not to negations, but to affirmations of the 
witness for Truth; not to nays for themselves., 
but to the everlasting yea and amen of Christ; 
not to emptiness and hollowness but to experi- 
mental fulness of the blessing of the Gospel. 
And we put aside conventional patterns of the 
heavenly things, for the sake of the heavenly 
things themselves; and would let all intercept- 
ing mediums and men be superseded by the ^ One 
mediator between God and men, the man Christ 
Jesus.' " 

John Dillingham himself, and probably few 
of his associates in the management of The 
Friend y realized the magnitude of the task 
of editing a weekly paper where one man is 
chiefly responsible for at least seven three- 



JOHN H. DILLINGHAM AS EDITOR 161 

columned pages of printed matter fifty-two 
times in the year. In such cases voluntary con- 
tributions are limited in quantity and quality, 
solicitation of original matter requires liberal 
correspondence and takes time in editing. Most 
every one in such a situation is driven to the 
shears and paste pot. But even this is a toil- 
some operation requiring a careful examination 
of exchanges for matter that fits the general 
scheme. One cannot picture these requirements 
without a measure of wonder that John Dilling- 
ham carried them for twelve years, along with a 
schedule of daily school duties, without show- 
ing even greater marks than he did of being 
an overburdened man. The old habit of college 
study that encroached heavily upon the usual 
hours of sleep made many an editorial possible, 
or gave the opportunity for the necessary letters 
to pacify contributors whose productions he was 
bound to reject. The twelve volumes of The 
Friend that bear his imprint as editor are full 
of meat. Many of the contributed articles in- 
dicate that they made part of an editorial plan, 
and gave luminous discussion of subjects much 
to the fore in the Society of Friends. This is 
also true of much of the selected matter. Had 
there been some arrangement for others to read 
exchanges and to bear routine duties, one easily 



162 LIFE OF JOHN H. DILLINGHAM 

believes the editorship would have afforded one 
of the best outlets for John Dillingham's ver- 
satile talents. So much is said by way of ex- 
planation because there has long been a tendency 
to estimate The Friend by a comparison with 
s^ome of the best-known weekly journals which 
now abound. It should be remembered that a 
single number of some of these will have much 
more labor (in hours of time) and much more 
money invested in them than is available for 
The Friend in a whole year ! 

The key-note of John Dillingham's editorship, 
as the pages for which he was responsible are 
now reviewed, is perceived to be the affirmation 
or more properly the reaffirmation of Truth, 
rather than the note of destructive criticism. 
Certain repudiations of principles and practices, 
such as seem involved in pastorships and pro- 
gramme services in the Society of Friends, he 
wrote against fearlessly. No one more surely 
than he during the Harvard and Brattleboro 
years had given the whole range of denomina- 
tions an unprejudiced hearing. He always had 
the largest measure of tolerance and apprecia- 
tion of Christians under whatever name. But 
his conviction that Quakerism stood for some- 
thing they did not, was for him no mere tradi- 
tion or theory. He believed that these other 



JOHN H. DILLINGHAM AS EDITOR 163 

Christians, quite as certainly as truly convinced 
Friends, feel that it is best for the world that 
these specific differences should be maintained. 
On this ground therefore he was at times testify- 
ing against the practices of those he truly loved. 
His own reason for this is thus expressed in 
an editorial: 

" But it should be borne in mind that right 
recognition of ^ that which serveth God ' in the 
church must at the same time be a power to 
recognize ' that which serveth Him not' A 
church has not come to its true discretion un- 
less it can discern between its right hand and 
its left. An indiscriminate endorsement of 
every activity as so much life, quickly confuses 
and destroys the gift of recognition." 

The positive note as mentioned above was, 
however, the congenial note to him and he was 
at his best in proclaiming it. This is very clear 
under the title, " Luminaries of Peace." 

" There may be an unsanctified testimony- 
bearing which puts forth just such irritating 
remarks about war, as serve only to inflame 
resentment and war-spirit in their hearers. 
' Like begets like '. . . 

"Blessed indeed it is to keep the peace. If 
we keep the peace, peace will keep us. It ' shall 
keep your hearts and minds through Christ 



164 LIFE OF JOHN H. DILLINGHAM 

Jesus.' In Ms Sermon on the Mount it was not 
' Blessed are the peace-fceepers/ that he said. 
Though the blessing must include these, yet it 
is the positively faithful that are named^ — 
' Blessed are the peace-ma/bers.^ Again it is said, 
' The fruit of righteousness is sown in peace of 
them that make peace.' This is more than being 
peaceable ourselves. It is to watch all right 
openings to produce peaceful effects; to exert a 
peaceful influence; to reconcile differences; to 
' follow the things which make for peace, and 
things whereby one may edify one another ' ; 
not only that our lanterns should contain the 
oil of peace, but should submit to the holy spark 
which will make them shine out as luminaries." 

Somewhat more of this constructive note will 
be indicated by the following excerpts : 

"Let us have the true aggressiveness — have 
grace by practising it — grace by which we may 
serve Him acceptably — abundant grace by con- 
tinual surrender to the Holy Witness, and there 
will be hidden giants of the Holy Spirit who 
will shake the land round about as much as the 
eminent." 

" They alone have celebration-power of the 
birth of Christ who know of the new birth in 
themselves. These, as children of the light and 



JOHN H. DILLINGHAM AS EDITOR 165 

children of the day, though they may pass under 
clouds and storms, yet while they abide in Him 
know no sunset to their Christmas day/' 

" Not that distinctiveness made our profession 
true, but Truth made it distinctive. Truth gave 
to our peculiar service the lineaments of its 
own testimony and distinguishment. It always 
does, throughout nature and throughout grace.'' 

'^ Praying in the Language of Conduct. 

" Lately a Friend, who was passing where a 
servant woman w^as sinking upon her knees in 
order to scrub a floor, said to her : ' Well, — as 
all faithful work is prayer, in the doing of it 
we might as well kneel.' 

" Not himself for the moment taking in the 
full scope of the impromptu words, and she at 
once brightening up under them as one lifted 
above their literal sense, he was moved soon 
after to contemplate the language as sent to him 
for his own, if not for another's good. . . . 

" Yes, in the doing of all right work ' we 
might as well kneel,' — ^no other posture of spirit 
is safe but that of watching and praying." 

'^Fragmentary Service. 

" A hungry world needs our crumb-service, if 
crumbs are handed us to give; our fragmentary 



t^ 



166 LIFE OF JOHN H. DILLINGHAM 

service, our unfinished bits to dispense if we 
are shut up to no larger opportunities." 

"Probably no single article or selection ap- 
pearing in this periodical for years past or to 
come will be found to contain the whole truth 
of life. We gather up fragments, here a little, 
there a little. Some fact, or aspect of duty or 
truth may meet one condition, another point 
may be seasonable to another. Gospel sermons 
also are broken bread handed forth." 

John Dillingham had a peculiar fondness for 
and some facility in short epigrammatic state- 
ments of truth. This in his hand was a new tool of 
instruction for The Friend. A religious journal 
of the Baptists known as the Ram's Horn cul- 
tivates this type of writing to good purpose in 
arresting the attention of the indifferent. There 
is good reason to believe that the limited amount 
of it in The Friend had a service. A few samples 
are reprinted as well for their intrinsic worth, 
as to make this characteristic of the editorship 
clear. This then by way of introduction: 

" If half the peace and harmony of human 
intercourse depends on how things are said, the 
other half depends on how they are received." 

" My creed 's the view I hold as true, 
My creed in fact is that I do." 



JOHN H. DILLINGHAM AS EDITOK 167 

" What will it profit us that Jesus died for 
sin, if we do not die to sin? " 

" What shall I render unto the Lord for all 
His benefits unto me? (Answer) Surrender." 

" A good way to turn our condition into joy 
is to turn it into another's joy." 

" Even sound doctrine will mark an unsound 
man, if he rests in the doctrine and does not 
live in the Spirit." 

" The new heredity of regeneration is offered 
at the door of every heart — to be born again — 
not of corruptible seed but by the Word and 
power of God." 

" If Christ be thy life He is thy living." 

" Keep to the law as the Right directs." 

" The foot and mouth disease — Gadding round 
to gossip (also James 3: 8-10)." 

Not infrequently John Dillingham expressed 
himself in verse. These efforts chiefly were on 
anniversary occasions, not of a serious nature. 
One little poem printed in The Friend is of a 
different character and it may not unsuitably 
conclude this chapter. 



168 LIFE OF JOHN H. DILLINGHAM 

^' Vacation at Pocono Lake 

" Hallowed be the time that God doth bless, 
This Sabbath of our year, 
Whom we the Lord of Life confess, 
And in his works revere. 

" Thy life in nature rests our mind. 
Thy life in grace restores our soul, 
Thy love our only home we find. 
Thyself in life and death our goal.'' 



CHAPTER IX 

PERSONAL CHARACTERISTICS 

Some years ago a schoolgirl in the beginniDg 
grade of the High School had assigned for the 
subject of a composition, ^^ A Face I Know/' 
Time has passed — enough for her to have fin- 
ished school and college and to have become the 
mother of an interesting family — but her descrip- 
tion makes a fitting introduction to a chapter 
on personal characteristics, the face described 
changed so little in a dozen years: 

" There is a certain face which to me appears 
beautiful not because of anything really hand- 
some in it, but because it portrays a good heart 
and pure life. The general appearance would 
cause me to pronounce it a pleasing face, for 
there is such a mild, genial expression about the 
whole countenance that one cannot help noticing 
it. 

" The broad forehead exhibits some lines show- 
ing that life has not been all play but that there 
are daily trials to be borne. 

" There is often a twinkle in the dark-brown 
eyes, for the owner is full of fun and the eyes 

169 



170 LIFE OF JOHN H. DILLINGHAM 

show it by sparkling when he is hearing some 
joke or thinking up a pun. 

" Yet although he is at times merry, the mouth 
expresses something else deeper than this, for 
it shows he can be determined when he is doing 
what he thinks right. One can easily see that 
he will do what conscience dictates at any cost. 

" The general appearance is helped by a gray, 
almost white beard, for it tells that a good many 
years have passed over his head leaving his heart 
youthful and happy still." 

The penetration of a child in detecting the 
salient points of character is very manifest in 
this portrait. Goodness, geniality, endurance, 
determination, and fun, blended so as to be de- 
finitely youthful and happy in old age, will be 
recognized by most as a description of John 
Dillingham. In a sense it is easy thus to enu- 
merate traits of character as belonging to an 
individual. The power of personality that 
blends these traits into a unique character is, 
however, too subtle for words. The best per- 
haps that one can hope to do is to give some 
suggestive points, in an attempted analysis, that 
will revive pleasant memories in those to whom 
the personality itself was so real. 

In a letter quoted in the chapter on the " De- 
velopment of Religious Life," John Dillingham 



PERSONAL CHARACTERISTICS 171 

says to liis mother that he can understand " how 
grandfather Hoag forgot his constitutional em- 
barrassment when his mind became full of the 
higher concerns of his religion." This Hoag 
reticence was a distinct heredity which John 
Dillingham never wholly overcame. In the 
Brattleboro circle, which during the sixties was 
as highly a polished circle as could be found in 
our country, he suifered intensely from it. 
Fortunately one of his mother's old teachers at 
Providence, Mary Ann Barker, had a high class 
girls' school at Brattleboro. It was known as 
" Mrs. Howland's school," she having married 
a New Bedford Rowland. She found her old 
scholar's son out, very soon after his arrival, 
and thereafter, regularly, a place was spread for 
him once a week at her tea-table. As a sup- 
plementary course in what John Dillingham 
called " polishments " this was of great value to 
him. It at least gave him the courage to make 
a social effort, even if afterward he suffered 
from a sense of being a " social failure." As 
noted above, however, he never wholly overcame 
this difficulty. To some it seemed like taciturn- 
ity, to others self-absorption. There is abun- 
dant evidence that it was neither. In circles 
where the embarrassment was least felt, he was 
actually a centre of social stimulation. 



172 LIFE OF JOHN H. DILLINGHAM . 

In view of such natural diffidence it is the 
more remarkable that John Dillingham dis- 
played such an attractive type of human sym- 
pathy. In the last twenty years of his life, one 
would come upon the greatest variety of people 
in confidential conference with him. Now it 
might be a member of the housekeeping staff of 
the school, now a little child from an elementary 
grade, now a teacher or a member of an advanced 
class in the school, now a Haverford graduate 
who had come a long distance for an interview, 
now some worthy minister or elder of his be- 
loved Society, now a pastor of another denomina- 
tion, oftenest, perhaps, the " lost sheep of the 
house of Israel." So considerable were these 
claims upon him that it seemed necessary at 
times to exercise a little authority to secure him 
in the opportunity to pursue his school duties 
or his editorial work. 

This wealth of human sympathy had still an- 
other side. The shipwrecked members of society 
in Philadelphia known as " hoboes " reported 
on one occasion that two men were always open 
to their pleas for help. One of these was the 
rector of a well-known Episcopal congregation, 
the other was John Dillingham. The modern 
method of organized charity appealed to both 
of these men, but they did not have it in their 



PERSONAL CHARACTERISTICS 173 

hearts to turn away from the cry of distress. A 
meal paid for at a restaurant for such might 
entail a bill for meals for a week before they 
learned of the imposition; a payment of a few 
dollars to keep " a suffering mother and chil- 
dren " from being turned into the street might 
prove to be a wholly mythical situation, but how 
could they know the next case was not genuine I 
To paraphrase the Scripture, " the cry of the 
poor had come unto them, and they heard the 
cry of the afflicted." 

It is probably no mistake to say that the in- 
strument that John Dillingham used to overcome 
his embarrassment on the one hand and to open 
the door of personal sympathy on the other was 
his playful humor. It was in him, an inimitable 
quality. Perhaps it is always so, where it is 
natural. An attempt to reproduce it may seem 
little better than caricature. The grave man- 
ner, the twinkling eye, the special setting of each 
case cannot be reproduced. The two or three 
instances noted may be in keeping with the sug- 
gestive character of this chapter. 

A young woman tells how she was suddenly 
arrested on Chestnut Street by a gust of wind 
that blew her glasses to the pavement and broke 
them to pieces. John Dillingham was at her 
side and as the effort to gather the pieces was 



174 LIFE OF JOHN H. DILLINGHAM 

in course, a friend drew up in an automobile. 
A request that she should get into the ear was 
promptly answered for her with, " She can't see 
her way clear to do that ! " 

A very rainy summer had brought reports of 
some discomfort in a camping colony of which 
Friends were happy patrons. In the case of two 
for whom John Dillingham felt a special inter- 
est, a spring of water had broken out under their 
bed. On meeting one of them afterward some 
pleasantry passed about the comforts of camp 
life, concluded by the remark " I hear that you 
even had springs under your bed." The prompt 
assurance that it was not so — that they slept 
on pine boughs, with an almost immediate dis- 
covery thereafter of the intended play, may com- 
plete the picture of this instance. 

A well-known physician in Philadephia was 
driving in Fairmount Park with John Dilling- 
ham. As they approached the striking military 
monuments erected by the estate of Kichard 
Smith the remark was, " John, we shall never 
have such monuments as those." " No," was 
the reply, " we have never killed enough for 
that, or at least I never have ! " 

Whether appearing in recited instances or 
not, the characteristic quality of John Dilling- 
ham's playfulness was its benignity. This 



PERSONAL CHARACTERISTICS 175 

cannot be claimed for all repartee. Mere intel- 
lectual wit often has a sting in it. To have 
the heart quality manifest even in the use of 
sharp tools is truly a mark of superior merit. 
This observation seems to introduce what we 
would set down as the predominating character- 
istic of John Dillingham's character. No single 
word seems to fit the situation better than guile- 
lessness. One can search hundreds of letters 
and volumes of written addresses, and not find 
one unkind personal reflection. Nor is this in 
any sense an accidental circumstance. The 
effect of the " grace of God " in overcoming 
resentment had been an early experience in his 
life. This grace became the active principle in 
regulating his relationships with his fellows. It 
put him on the path of finding good in them and 
not evil. Some of the later entries in his journal 
are specially instructive in this line. They refer 
to the religious service of men not of his school 
of thought in the profession of Quakerism. 
Invariably^ the notes are of the instruction he 
had received from their efforts. Nor is there 
the slightest mark that this was a strained 
act on his part. It was the candid attitude 
and habit of his life. 

In writing of remembered sermons of John 
Dillingham's, one correspondent has told of an 



176 LIFE OF JOHN H. DILLINGHAM 

occasion when he dealt with the habit of the 
water-lily of the New England marshes^ — told 
how it developed a life of surpassing loveliness 
out of conditions apparently repulsive, and 
finally blossomed upon the surface of stagnant 
water with so much beauty and richness of per- 
fume that one failed to see the surrounding con- 
ditions in admiration of the perfected flower. 
This was his ideal of the Christian's life — this 
the consummate work of grace upon human 
nature. He preached it to others with a sense 
of needed attainment for himself. These can 
hardly think of his life and of his feeling of short- 
coming without the reflection, " Thy humility 
hath made thee great.'' 



CHAPTER X 

SERVICE AND RECOMPENSE 

The religious experience that brought John 
Dillingham through doubts and un settlement 
gave him a key for his life-work. A distinct 
sense of a design in his being, which he must 
realize by accepting divine guidance, as before 
indicated, became a marked feature of his career. 
Outward situation and service, whether comfort- 
able or not, were in this view a means of char- 
acter building under the Divine architect. This 
feeling and attitude are very clearly revealed in 
three Commencement addresses delivered at well- 
known Quaker institutions. 

First at Haverford College in 1874 : " It is said 
that ^ when Parmenio was addressing an Athenian 
assembly, he continued his discourse though all 
had left him except Plato. He said that Plato 
was audience enough for him.' So may it be 
your future stay and support that you are not 
alone, — a greater than Plato is with you. Your 
whole duty of Christian manhood you can do, 

^77 



178 LIFE OF JOHN H. DILLINGHAM 

without credit^ — without Him^ nothing. In Him 
your labor is not in vain, whether emblazoned or 
in secret. In the deep satisfaction of the Divine 
approval, the intrusion of human praise has 
^ no glory, by reason of the glory that excelleth.' 
The right style of man ^ shall not be afraid of 
evil tidings; his heart is fixed trusting in the 
Lord.' " 

At Earlham College in 1877 : 

" John Stuart Mill is said to have remarked : 
' You Christians must stick fast to your argu- 
ment from design, if you wish to maintain your 
doctrine of the existence of the Deity.' 

" You [graduates] are fresh from your studies 
of Omniscient design. Every text-book has 
shown you new features of it. All nature is 
full of it; all art hangs upon it. . . . But the 
interesting question is, shall all the perfect thor- 
oughness of providential design be true and not 
be true for you? Are your individual lives ex- 
ceptions to the order of creation, — mere whims 
of circumstance or sports of accident? Why, 
there is not an accidental atom ! If, as it is said, 
^ one grain of sand more or less would disturb 
or even fatally disorder the whole scheme of the 
heavenly motions,' surely there is a reason for 
every man's existence which it would be a 
calamity for liim to miss, — a place for every 



SERVICE AND RECOMPENSE 179 

man and supervision to dispose him accordingly, 
— an end for which he was born, a cause for 
which he came into the world." 

In much the same vein at Friends' Select 
School, Philadelphia, in 1901 : 

" But whatever the past has accomplished, the 
tremendous thing now is that there is a future 
to step out into. This day commences it. This 
beginning of days is the last day we can urge 
upon you a surrender to the character-building 
Word. It speaks to our higher life from the 
Highest life. It speaks to our lower life say- 
ing, ' Come up higher.' It is always construc- 
tive and upbuilding; disregard of it always 
destructive, degrading. Its energy is the very 
creative energy itself, both life and power. All 
penetrating, it lights up the discrimination be- 
tween thoughts and intents, laying bare to the 
conscience our motives, and is the searchlight to 
every secret corner of our guilt or good.'' The 
remarkable part of which declarations is that 
they represent a programme for life which John 
Dillingham himself signally fulfilled. He could 
accept any position or place that seemed in the 
Divine appointment and find a service therein. 
So as events of his life transpired he was watch- 
ful in them for the Divine opportunity to answer 
the purpose of his being and to witness for a 



180 LIFE OF JOHN H. DILLINGHAM 

living Christ. Some of the opportunities were 
unusual and may be noted here. 

Harvard University during Commencement 
week was the scene of one of these incidents. 
Several times during the later years of his life 
he felt it his place to join his fellow-alumni at 
these reunions. His Quaker garb was a recog- 
nized badge, but no one regarded it with any- 
thing but respect. Indeed it is not unlikely that 
it was the instrument of having him called out 
for a speech. In any event the opportunity came 
to him and he found more than a respectful 
hearing for the message that was not lacking in 
his heart for the occasion. The inspeaking word 
of Quaker profession was proclaimed as an out- 
speaking life, in all that is most noble and 
exalting. 

The dedication of the new capitol in Harris- 
burg in 1906 was an event toward which honest 
citizens generally looked with shame, so flagrant 
had been the misappropriation of funds in the 
building operations. When finally John Dilling- 
ham was solicited to appear on the programme 
and open the public exercises with a Bible read- 
ing, he naturally shared these common feelings 
of repulsion. He committed the case to best 
guidance during the night after the invitation 
was received. In the morning he rose, with a 



SEKVICE AND RECOMPENSE 181 

distinct sense that it would be right for him to 
accept. Secretly he hoped it might be an open- 
ing for a clear testimony, that would put 
Friends, so far as he represented them, in a 
true light. Prior to the exercises as the honored 
guests of the occasion were escorted through the 
building and special attention was called to the 
attempt to make a wise use of William Penn's 
maxims as mottoes on the wall, John Dillingham 
appeared to be scanning these with unusual care, 
when one asked, '' What are you looking for, Mr. 
Dillingham? '' He replied that he could not 
find the maxim, ^^ They that serve the public 
must have public minds as well as salaries; or 
they will serve private ends at the public cost." 

The Scripture-reading itself seemed to justify 
his hope of a testimony for the Truth. It pro- 
ceeded as follows : " I will read brief selections 
from the Holy Scriptures, trusting that it is in 
the heart of not a few of us in coming here, 
to dedicate both in this temple of government, 
and in our bodies as temples of the Holy 
Spirit, only^ * whatsoever things are true, what- 
soever things are honorable, whatsoever things 
are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatso- 
ever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of 
good report; if there be any virtue and if there 
be any praise ' and to ^ think on these things.' " 



182 LIFE OF JOHN H. DILLINGHAM 

"Let us search and try our ways, and turn 
again to the Lord. Let us lift up our heart with 
our hands unto God in the heavens." 

" And Solomon spread forth his hands and 
said: O Jehovah, the God of Israel, there is 
no God like thee in heaven or on earth, who 
keepest covenant and loving-kindness with thy 
servants, that walk before thee with all their 
heart. But will God in very deed dwell with 
men on the earth? Behold, heaven and the 
heaven of heavens cannot contain thee; how 
much less this house which I have builded. 
Whereinsoever a man shall sin . . . then hear 
thou from heaven and judge thy servants, requit- 
ing the wicked, to bring his way upon his own 
head; and justifying the righteous to give him 
according to his righteousness. What ]3rayer or 
what supplication soever be made by any man, 
or by all thy people, who shall know every man 
his own plague and his own sorrow and shall 
spread forth his hands in this house; then hear 
thou from heaven thy dwelling place and for- 
give, and render unto every man according to 
all his ways, whose heart thou knowest (for 
thou even thou only knowest the hearts of the 
children of men) ;- that they may fear thee, to 
walk in thy ways, so long as they live in the 
land which thou gavest unto their fathers." 



SERVICE AND RECOMPENSE 183 

^' Remember us, O Lord, with the favor thou 
bearest unto thy people. O visit us with thy sal- 
vation, that we may see the good of thy chosen, 
that we may rejoice in the gladness of thy nation, 
that we may glory with thine inheritance." 

" Therefore seeing that we are compassed 
about with so great a cloud of witnesses, let us 
lay aside every weight, and the sin which doth 
so easily beset us, and let us run with patience 
the race that is set before us, looking unto Jesus 
the author and perfecter of our faith." 

" Keep silence before me, O islands, and let 
the people rencAv their strength; let them come 
near; then let them speak; let us come near 
together to judgment." 

This Scripture-reading was followed by a 
pause of devotional silence which to some at 
least was vocal, and a living testimony of the 
Quaker view of worship as an individual 
spiritual exercise. 

During the concluding year of John Dilling- 
ham's life (1910) two other instances of special 
service have the personal character we have noted 
above. One carried him to Oregon, the other 
was within the limits of the Philadelphia home 
circle. In both of them the friendship of old 
scholars — a teacher's best recompense — made 
particularly pleasant the claim of duty he felt. 



184 LIFE OF JOHN H. DILLINGHAM 

Samuel Hill, a student at Haverford during 
John Dillingham's term there, had been instru- 
mental in establishing a colony especially attrac- 
tive to Friends at Maryhill in Oregon. He had 
built a Friends' meeting-house to accommodate 
settlers and in opening it for use felt particularly 
desirous that the type of meeting should be that 
which had appealed to him at Haverford. He 
invited John Dillingham and his wife to be pre- 
sent at the opening as his guests. So the trans- 
continental journey was undertaken, in a feeling 
that besides the privilege of a human friendship 
that had drawn him thither, he might find an 
open door to represent the high privilege of Him 
who has called us to the estate of friends in a 
spiritual inheritance. This opportunity was 
very clearly afforded, and a good measure of 
satisfaction was felt that a right concern for 
the initial meeting at Maryhill had been met. 
The other incident had to do with the solem- 
nizing of a marriage. The young woman con- 
cerned in it, by heredity as well as by school 
training, was connected with Friends. In the ar- 
rangement for her marriage two ministers of dif- 
ferent denominations were to have part. She felt 
a very strong desire in addition that her beloved 
" Master " John Dillingham might have place 
to bestow a blessing, as she phrased it, if it were 



SERVICE AND RECOMPENSE 185 

in his heart to do so. Upon some consultation, 
she was advised that it would be best not to 
mention it to him, but to arrange so that a 
natural opportunity for such expression would 
follow the official ceremony. So it was pro- 
posed that a period of silent waiting should be 
entered upon by the whole congregation as a fit- 
ting conclusion of the marriage. In writing to a 
distant friend about it afterward John Dilling- 
ham said he found himself in this silence upon his 
feet before he had reflected upon the propriety of 
appearing in such a place and at such a time. His 
call had seemed to be to emphasize the nature 
of marriage as a divine ordinance to which the 
Head of the Church set His seal in the promise 
to be with the two united in His name. By 
some failure of the means of conveyance to the 
place of the reception John Dillingham did not 
occupy the seat of honor prepared for him, and 
did not hear from the bridal party how highly 
they had esteemed his faithfulness. So in the 
written account he gave of the incident, he could 
only say that he trusted the service so unex- 
pected to himself had not been an offense to 
those most concerned. 

This type of character thus delineated, find- 
ing a sphere of service in special and personal 
calls of duty in addition to the call in a 



186 LIFE OF JOHN H. DILLINGHAM 

professional or a business career, is not unusual 
to Christians under all names. In few, however, 
does it become more fixed as a definite charac- 
teristic than it was in John Dillingham's life. 
What then shall we say of the recompense of 
such a life? Of mere worldly recompense, of 
place or profit or glory, there may be none. 
Those who have their hearts set upon a daily 
following of their Lord know well of satisfac- 
tions beyond any of these. " The effect of right- 
eousness," of this special kind of personal 
righteousness, is peace." That recompense was 
written upon John Dillingham's countenance 
more and more as he advanced in years. It be- 
came the atmosphere of his life. He proclaimed 
it, not so much by what he said, as by what 
he did. For him to live had actually become 
Christ-likeness. And to such a climax, in his 
case, we come whether we consider his life as 
teacJier, minister, or man. 



FINIS. 



INDEX 



Academy, Lawrence, 15, 16 
Adirondacks, incident of 

meeting in, 125-27 
Affirmations of Quakerism, 

160 
Agassiz, Prof., 40 
Aggressiveness, true, 164 
Austin, Samuel, 57 



B 



Barker, Mary Ann, 171 
Bamegat, service in, 138- 

45 
Bede, Moses, argument con- 
cerning sure word of 
prophecy, 109 
Bettle, Samuel, 111, 112, 

119, 120 
Blackwood, almshouse at, 

137 
Brattleboro, Vt., 41, 44 
Brooks, Phillips, 156 
Butler, Martha L., 23-24 



Cambridge in 1865, 46, 47. 
See also Harvard 

Canada, service in, 153 

Cape Cod loyalty, 10 

Cartland, Gertrude W., let- 
ter from, 60 

Cartland, Lydia, letter to. 



77-80, 102, 104 



I 
187 



Character, salient points of, 

170 
Christ-consciousness, 117 
Christ-likeness as climax, 

186 
Christ's mission, 99-101 
Coffin, Charles, 39 
Cowpei-thwaite, Levi, 137, 

138 
Curwensville, service at, 153 



Davis, " Jefferson," 46 

Dennett, letters to, 80, 83- 
85 

Dillingham, Abram, fam- 
ily of, 13 

Dillingham ancestry, 1-3 ; 
estate, 12 

Dillingham, John H., natural 
endowments, 3 ; schools, 
3, 4; as school teacher, 4, 
5 ; prizes, 5 ; society mem- 
berships, 5; chums, 5, 6; 
ambitions, 6; life and 
lodgings at Harvard, 29- 
32; drafted, 45; at Haver- 
ford College, 49; at 
Friends' Select School, 
50, 61; choice of conser- 
vative Quakerism, 53, 54; 
marriage, 61; his play- 
fulness, 69-71; his sym- 
pathy, 71, 72; his spiritual 
influence, 72-75 ; restraint 
and sensitiveness, 108- 



188 



INDEX 



109; overseer and elder, 
120; "thoughtful min- 
ister," 154; originality, 
155 

Dillingham, Moses, 40, 42- 
44; death of, 86; under- 
standing of his sufferings, 
97 98 

Ditzler, Wm. U., 119, 133- 
188, 148, 156 

Dress, distinctive, 54, 55 

Dunn, Philip and Elizabeth, 
134, 135 



E 



Earlham College, Com- 
mencement address at, 
178 

Elder, John H. Dillingham 
as, 120; service as, 133 

Everett, Edward, oration on 
Webster, 35-37 



Fletcher, J. C, on Wal- 
denses, 40 

Fox, George, 145, 152 

Friend, The, editor of, 159; 
duties of editorship, 160- 
162 

Friends' Select School, 50, 
61, 123 ; Commencement 
address at, 179 

Friends, Society of, birth- 
right in, 7; schools, 15; 
Review, contributor to, 
53; separation from, 79 



Gifford, Lois, 106 



God, manifest in the flesh, 
98, 99; fatherhood of, 99; 
not retributive Judge, 103 
Grace of God, effect of, 21 
Guidance, at wedding, Tren- 
ton, N. J., 129; at funer- 
al in New Jersey, 130- 
131; in prayer, 132 

H 

Haddonfield, service at, 136, 
137 

Haines, Jesse, 156 

Hammond, Harriet R., let- 
ter from, 16-18 

Handwork, 12 

Harrisburg, service at, 153; 
dedication of Capitol at, 
180, 181 

Harvard, " common book," 
v; in 1858, 25; entrance 
examinations, 25, 26 ; 
first impressions of, 26- 
28 ; Commencement in- 
cident, 180 

Haverford College, in- 
structor in, vi; engage- 
ment to go to, 47-49; 
Commencement address 
at, 177 

Heredity, Pilgrim-Quaker, 8 

Higginson, Col. Thos. Went- 
worth, family of, 45 

Hill, Samuel, 184 

Holmes, Justice 0. W., on 
poverty at Harvard, 28 

Holy Scriptures, spiritual 
faith in, 88-90 

Holy Spirit, authority of, 96 

Home for Incurables, 153 

Homestead, views from, 14 

Howland, Benjamin, 121 ; 
Rachel, 39-40 

Howland school, the, 171 

Hoxie, Lydia, 106 



INDEX 



189 



Jones, Eli, on burnt sacri- 
fices, 121, 122; Sibyl, 39- 
40; interview with Sibyl, 
122 



Key-note, editorial, 159, 162 
L 

Leeds, Prof. Albert, letter 
concerning Haverford 
College, 48 ; friendship 
with, 85, 86; letter to, 
86-90 

Letters, religious extracts 
from his mother's, 102- 
116 

Lincoln, Abraham, 46 

Lynn, visits to, 38-40 

M 

Marriage, John Dilling- 
ham's, 61; incident at a, 
184, 185 

Maryhill, 184 

McElroy, providential in- 
cident concerning, 134 

Metcalf, Joseph, scholar- 
ships, 57 

Miles, Principal C. A., 41 

Minister, incident of recom- 
mending, in New Jersey, 
127-129; John H. Dilling- 
ham recommended as, 124 

Ministry, call to, 118, 119 

Muncy, communication at, 
156 



N 



North Carolina, service in, 
153 



Oregon, service in, 183, 184 
Outsider, how it is with an, 

55-60 
Overseer, John H. Dilling- 
ham, as, 120 



Parents, letters to. 111, 113 
Parker, Edward L., letter 

from, vi 
Peace, Luminaries of, 163, 

164 
Pennsylvania Bible Society, 

153; Prison Society, 153 
Phi Beta Kappa Society, 

membership in, 35 
Phoenix, letter to, 45-47 
Pocono Lake, 168 
Poverty at Harvard, 33 
Praying in Conduct, 165 
Prize, Boylston, division of 

with 0. W. Holmes, Jr., 

34 



Q 



Quakerism, conservative, vi ; 
in Dillingham family, 3 

Quest in John H. Dilling- 
ham's religious life, 85 



R 



Ram's Horn, 166 

Rand, Herbert L., New 
England characteristics, 
11 

Recommended as minister, 
124 

Religion, splendid and en- 
tertaining character of, 
96, 97 

Reticence, Hoag, 171 



190 



INDEX 



Roman Catholic Church, re- 
port of joining, 83 

Rhoads, Charles, 136-138; 
Deborah, 137 



Sandwich, Massachusetts 
and New Hampshire, 7, 8 ; 
stock 

School,' 15; Sunday, 22; 
Friends' Select, 50, 61, 
123 

Scripture, references in re- 
gard to Christ as basis 
of faith, 91-96; read- 
ing at Harrisburg, 181- 
183 

Scull, David, 118, 156 

Sententious style, 155 

Service, Fragmentary, 165, 
166 

" Sing while you work," let- 
ter with this text, 50-52 

Smithville, meeting at, 145- 
152 

Stokes, Robert B., 138-45 

Storey, Moorfield, Harvard 
in the '60's, 28 

Sumner, Charles, on " True 
Grandeur of Nations," 37, 
38 

Swift, Daniel, 106, 109 



Taylor, Father, prayer 
meeting of, 39 

Theme, Harvard, on child- 
hood recollections, 18-21 

Trenton, meeting at, 135; 
State's Prison, 135 

Trust, the goal of religious 
life, 116 

Tuckerton, N. J., visit to, 
138 

Twelfth Street Meeting, 
119, 120; communica- 
tions in, 157 



Varney, Eliza H., 138-144 
W 

Whittier, John G., 60 
Whitall, Mary, 111 

Y 

Yarnall, Charles, 58, 119 

Z 
Zook, Elhanan, 136, 137 



\m 25 1912 



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